"You do what?" Kara, the matriarch, fixed her heavy lidded gaze on Mal. He shivered. In the corner of the cave, lying beneath Kara's heavy hindquarters, was Oll, his father. He had closed his eyes in shame.
"I kidnap princesses," Mal said. The second time he said it didn't make it any better than the first. Kara blinked, colour beginning to glow at her plexus; a sure sign that he was about five seconds away from a quite literal roasting.
"My own son!" Kara said. Oll made a small noise in the back of his throat and she whipped her head round to bite at the smaller dragon's wings. Oll immediately shrank back into the darkness of the cave and Mal listened to him slithering away with growing dread. There was the last hope he had of things coming out in the open.
"Do you have one up there right now?" Kara asked.
Mal blushed. "Yes," he admitted. "She's about seventeen. Comes from Conorra... She's blonde and--"
"Cubic Zirconium!" Kara swore. "I don't want to hear about your human piece upstairs. This is disgusting. After all I've done for you!"
"It's not just me!" Mal spat out, and Kara's gold eyes widened in shock.
Her voice got very low, the glow in the centre of her throat threatening to rise up towards her maw. The purple scales on her breastbone had begun to turn a dark black, the red of her fire leaking from beneath the plate. Mal realised he was on dangerous ground, but plowed ahead nonetheless.
"Oll keeps one, too. His is called Marta, and he grabbed her when he was out hunting last week. This is the third one he's had since he became your mate."
"Malachite, I hope this is some kind of sick joke. These perversions have gone on long enough. You will return the princess, I will find you a young dragonling with pale scales... Quartz, you liked Quartz." Kara had begun to bargain with him.
"I'm not interested in dragons, Kara. I like my princess. It's a normal thing to want!"
The red glow of fire moved upwards to sit in between the bones of Kara's jaw. Steam was curling loosely from her nostrils, the muscles of her forearms tensed. The spines on the back of her neck had risen to stand like knife points, scratching the roof of the cave.
"It is not," she hissed. "Normal. You will return the princess and we will never speak of this again, or I will burn any girl I find in your rooms."
"Kara--" Mal started.
"Enough!" Kara raised herself up to her full height: three times that of Mal's. Her purple and indigo scales trembled in the dim light, the silvery remains of scars she had won fighting humans seemed to glow as her eyes became bright burning spheres of anger.
"I think I love her," Mal said.
Kara screamed: a long, high pitched sound that seemed to come from the ball of fire in her throat itself. That was when the burning began.