The boy nodded his head, his face small and serious—Nymeria watched him and bit back a laugh. When she had followed him, both scornful and self-pitying, she hadn’t expected herself to so rapidly warm to him, for her barriers to crumble and fall in a matter of minutes rather than hours. She had expected to look at him, to hate and despair and dream of easier times—but she had been wrong.

Life would only continue to get more complicated as she wove together her strands of power, a weaving that would result in a tapestry of a kingdom. Kid… he was part of this, and who was she to deny him his place in her world based on bitter judgment?

Nymeria flicked an ear, shifting her weight uncomfortably beneath the boy’s scrutiny. Looking at him, thin and delicate and bruised and battered… she didn’t know if he could or would shed the connotations of his name. Perhaps when he was older that would change; perhaps, one day, Kid would not be a nickname for nephews and nieces but a word of respect and fear. The boy’s mother, after all, was a well-oiled war machine, scarred with age and battle; she was no doubt capable of raising him as a warrior, a conqueror. And yet… looking at him… did mother ever doubt Volterra and I? Or did she always know what we would grow up to be?

How much do parents really change you anyways?

“I don’t know,” she admitted to him. “But I don’t see why not.”

Lilómiel shifted on her withers, trailing his primaries across her shoulders. She could feel his disapproval reverberating through her mind’s labyrinthine thoughts. It’s not a lie, she told the dragon. It’s not as if we guaranteed it to him.

She wondered then, the sharpness of her own thought almost painful, what she would think of Kid if she weren’t her, if she were someone—anyone—else. In the throes of her imagination it was not a pleasant idea; because he was born and bred a monster, just as she had been, and whatever he did would undoubtedly be connected back to her. Or at least to her, if not backwards. That face of his wasn’t just a reflection of her mother and herself; it was a liability that had never crossed her mind.

You’ll have to watch him. Guide him.

I don’t know Lil. Wouldn’t it be easier to just… be off with him? (She knew that was an idiotic idea. Of course she did. Mostly because he was her blood and she wasn’t that callous.) Except then she doesn’t have to bring up mentorship or apprenticeship because he does it on his own, and she decides it was meant to be. And for that she gives Kid a fond smile and hides away her laugh. “Of course I will. But first I’ll need to talk to your mom.”

For a moment longer she looks at him; and then carefully, with the caution one displays around a wild but harmless animal likely to flee, she circles around him, drawing up to his flank so her hip is by his.

“We can do that tomorrow,” she tells him, her mouth close to his ear. “Tonight… tonight why don’t you sleep? I’ll watch over you.”