It is the red who first spies the dragonmare; from his position high above the eerily blood-coloured trees and waterfall, he sees her golden scales glinting in the weak autumn sunshine. Unlike the other gold, the one he shares his bonded with, Amaris does not receive a deluge of hatred. Quite the contrary; from Volterra's mind, the red has detected that he holds fond memories of his time with the hybrid, and that Amaris is a large part of the reason why the then-colt sought out a dragon of his own.

In a twisted, abstract way, Vérzés owes his life to the dragonmare, the woman who gave Volterra the desire to approach the dying wild green that day and take on the care of her one living egg.

He circles lower and lower, until he's close enough to emit a caw of greeting to the hybrid. Volterra remembers the jealousy he felt when Vérzés lavished Amaris with the attention that he'd only ever given his bonded; now, though, it's not just the red who is happy to see her. A broad wolf's smile bursts onto the leviathan's scarred jaws as he turns to rest his eyes on her once again, drinking in everything that he hadn't allowed himself to last time.

When he saw her last, she was mourning, and it felt wrong to pay too close attention to her. Now, though....now he can see her in all her glory, and there's no feeble ties of decency to stop him. She is iridescent, part woman, part beast, the grace and curves of a mare with the hard lines and lazy power of a dragon. Like Vadir, she is beauty and deadly intent wrapped up into one golden bundle, and the giant's mouth is suddenly as dry as the desert. Heat spreads through his chest and down, and he only thanks the Gods that he has a little more control over his desires than he had a couple of months ago, when he first became a man. Of course, Amaris has always been beautiful - even the young, gangly-legged, milk-dripping version of himself had noticed that - but when he was a boy, he only admired her looks for their eerie draconic resemblance, their uniqueness. Now, he appreciates her on a whole other level, which is both a blessing and a curse.

A blessing, because every man has the right to appreciate the delicious form of a woman, to take said woman beneath him and drink from the well of pleasure that she offers. A curse, because she's his friend and probably still sees him as the question-bombarding boy he once was, not the adult male he now is. If he acted on what his loins are telling him to, she'd laugh in his face. Then kick him in it.

The mare's draconic hum draws Vadir's attention, and she turns from the waterfall towards the stranger. From her mind, Volterra feels pulsing curiosity; she had sung a hymn of sorrow over the dead body of this woman's mother and her golden bonded, yet unlike Vérzés she knows next to nothing about her. Her song had come from instinct, the primal knowledge that an empress of her kind had fallen. With the idle, calculated movements of a queen, the young gold lifts her horned head and scans the mare with evident interest. The things she can feel from Volterra are unusual - this is the first time she's been around him when he's lusting, and it makes the brute's nose shrivel as she lazily pokes and prods around in his emotions. He feels like a zoo exhibit, naked beneath her scrutinising gaze as she takes his decidedly male feelings into her female mind and dissects them.

She finds them mildly interesting, and files them away in her intelligent young mind. Then she discards them, and returns her attention to the dragonmare.

Unlike the eager red, she is not so quick to offer greeting. She sniffs the air, noting each scent that flows from the hybrid, then shifts her crimson gaze to the translucent dragons that accompany her. The red scaled one is not of much interest to her, as she lives her life sharing her bonded with one such hue, but the blue is a colour she has not yet met. She flares her wings and hauls herself upwards, circling over the spirit-dragons and observing them closely. Volterra watches her for a moment, more to take his attention from Amaris and give his thoughts time to settle than anything else, then glances back to the dragonmare as she greets him. "Amaris," he rumbles, his voice as warm as hers. "How do you fare, old friend?" He dares himself to look at her properly, trying to tame the beast that growls hungrily in his stomach. How is he to ask how she is without seeming condescending? She is unlikely to be just peachy when she's just lost her dam.