She's Wrong

Writers: Iluva, Sia
Date Posted: 20th April 2026

Characters: K'valas, A'garyn
Description: Aegaryn visits K'valas after Galgaith's first hatching
Location: Dragonsfall Weyr
Date: month 12, day 14 of Turn 12
Notes: Follows "DFW: He's Mine" and "DFW: Not Yours"

K'valas

A'garyn

K'valas only stayed at the hatching feast long enough to pile a tray full of food and a mug full of beer. There was no point in lingering. There was no family waiting for him, though he could imagine their reaction to Sazikoth easily enough. He'd changed out of the ill-fitting and torn candidate robes the moment he had a chance and dismissed the weyrlingmasters' concerns over the scratches scattered across his front. She'd got him pretty good, all things considered, and his arms and legs looked like when Zolta would play too rough. Sazikoth could have done a lot more damage with those talons, but she hadn't.

Her snoring now was more like a little rumble, tucked into her wallow no worse for the traumatic day. The remnants of the candidate robe wrapped around her like a small child's blanket. Even in sleep, she refused to let go of him.

K'valas caught the telltale flash of gold outside the alcove before the firelizard sailed in, perching on the back of the plain chair at the plainer desk that decorated his section of the weyrling barracks. He offered her a piece of meatroll as he waited for Aegaryn to follow.

Aegaryn was calm now. Or, at least he wore it well enough. He stepped just inside the curtained alcove, his expression shadowed with a tiredness that felt deep if undeserved, and quietly sized up the space. What had been allocated around them. _Between_ them. So this was it-- the room where Kavalas would sleep from now on. With her. The bed, the desk, the dragon. The silence.

Sazikoth's slumbering shape again. She seemed so small there, and there was a strange, unfamiliar sweetness to it that perplexed him-- distant, and difficult to make sense of. He didn't try. Didn't want to.

It eased the moment he finally let his eyes find Kav, even as something far more familiar woke in its place. Just a desperate, bone-deep ache that he had no name for because naming it would not help him now. For a long moment Aegaryn simply looked. No rage in it, no demand. Just watching. Taking Kavalas in as he was now, in this new life that had already begun without either of them quite meaning it to. The guilt felt irrelevant, suddenly. Smaller. His arms folded loosely over his chest and the dull, insistent pound of his heart as he carefully, quietly studied the scratches: numerous, but shallow, and that brought a shred of relief, at least.

Finally Aegaryn said, "Kav--" His throat worked, willed more words forward, but they felt so far beyond him. Beyond all of this. He exhaled softly. "Kav… are you okay?"

“Mm,” K’valas managed, the sound low and automatic.

He wasn’t. Not really. But there wasn’t a way to explain that; no words for the way his heart had seized earlier, his throat closing until he couldn’t breathe, until it had taken both Weyrlingmaster and dragon to drag him and Sazikoth back out of it. What was left now had settled into something duller. Heavier.

"Come here." He said instead, reaching a hand out to pull him closer. "Eat something."

“Not hungry,” Aegaryn said.

He came anyway. Zolta trilled softly, wings mantling as she settled herself as though nothing had changed. One corner of Aegaryn’s mouth lifted. His thumb brushed her cheek. He let himself lean against the desk, gripping its edge as he looked the other man over. He knew Kav wasn't okay. _Felt_ it. They were close enough now. The way they'd been on the Sands. Part of him half-expected Sazikoth to sense him from scent or proximity alone and wake in a fury, shrieking and snapping all over again. All those turns out there, together. And now - here.

“Not sure she'd approve of this,” he said, one eyebrow lifting at the sight of her curled in her wallow, still wrapped in the white candidate robe. “She made that pretty clear.” He paused. “She sounds like you, too. When you're good and pissed.” Which made it worse.

K'valas made a low, startled sound in the back of his throat that did, regrettably, sound familiar. "She does not." He grumbled. He leaned back a little, back straightening as he looked up at Aegaryn, and for a moment just looked at him. Properly. Took in the lines of him, the familiar set of his shoulders, the quiet tension in his hands. Too close not to touch. He remembered the Weyrlingmasters talk about the need for _space_ after Impression, and Sazikoth's immediate rage and jealousy at the thought of Aegaryn made that abundantly clear, before and after the panic attack on the sands. Still, the space between them felt wrong in a way that he couldn't ignore.

He moved before he could think better of it. He pulled himself to his feet and closed the distance Aegaryn didn't. His fingers hovered for a fraction of a second before settling against Aegaryn's cheek. K'valas exhaled shakily, thumb shifting just slightly as if to reassure himself. His eyes flicked briefly towards the small green shape in his wallow before brushing his lips against Aegaryn's.

The kiss wasn’t careful. It wasn’t planned. It was brief and full of everything he hadn’t been able to say, tension and need and something close to desperation all tangled together.

Sazikoth shifted. A low, uneasy tremor rolled through her sleep, a faint brush of her awareness stirring at the edges of K'valas' mind, pulled by the spike of emotion. K'valas pulled back just as quickly, though he didn't let go of Aegaryn. "Sorry." He said, "You're right. She won't like it."

“What are you apologizing for?” Aegaryn whispered, breathless, almost disbelieving. His arms had already drawn K'valas against him, encircling his bulk in that too-short kiss, and the rough hand at the back of Kav's neck squeezed in reassurance. “Don't. Not to me. Please.”

Aegaryn didn't let go, either. He listened, attuned to the sounds around them. Old habit, long ingrained. Their breathing. Any shift from the wallow behind them. Each second ticking into a future he couldn't compete with and couldn't fight. It just was: the world, and Kav, quietly reorganizing around a dragon’s choice.

But K'valas hadn't pulled away, and so Aegaryn pressed his forehead to the side of his neck, feeling the warmth and aliveness of him for just a moment. The tilt of his head dislodged droplets of water from his dark hair, tracking slow and cold down the collar of a shirt he hadn't even worn before today.

"I'm sorry, Kav." The words weren't hollow, but they were insufficient-- unequal to the depth of it. The whole thing had been his idea. And he knew the Weyrlingmaster's words about space, too, about touching, and he'd felt the sharp twist of Sazikoth's claim on the Sands like a knife, echoing back even now: }:He's mine! Not yours!:{

But she didn’t know what this was. What it meant to hunger for a person. Maybe she did, in her own way. Maybe it was just for this one, and that was something the two of them reluctantly shared. The only thing. “This place is fucked.” Aegaryn said, grip easing enough to look at him. “I'll go soon, if you think it's too much for her. But I am not leaving. Not the Weyr. Not you.”

K’valas huffed out a quiet, humorless breath at that, something in his shoulders loosening. He glanced back to the wallow, eyes taking on that faraway look again. They hadn't woken her. The touch itself wasn't the problem; it was the fear and panic and relief and ache, all tangled together into a knot in his chest. He took a slow breath in and tried to project calm for her. Anything less could wake her and make her even more incensed, and he didn't want to let go of Aegaryn. Not yet.

"'s not your fault." K'valas said quietly. "I made a choice. I knew my chances." Unlikely to Impress, perhaps, with the clutch size so small, but he'd known that a green would pick him. "Will you Stand again? The Weyr won't throw you out now."

“I know.” It was a risk, but not a possibility Aegaryn could have believed before today.

“No.” That answer came out before he could stop it, and the shame that chased it was old and familiar and entirely his, turned over so many times it should’ve worn smooth, but didn’t. Couldn’t. His brother had been Searched. Drenorik had deserved the sky and a dragon of his own but had gone with Aegaryn instead, which meant he’d gotten nothing. No amount of larger clutches changed that. No dragon sane enough to choose well would want a man who’d robbed his own kin of everything he’d earned and wanted and should’ve had.

Aegaryn looked at Zolta-- looked through her.

Kav’s touch anchored him and the ragged thing in his chest slowed a little-- enough, at least. He pressed into it, into the familiar geography of them, and let out a breath that had been sitting too long. Aegaryn shook his head.

“Maybe,” he said, finally. “Dunno. I can't stop thinking about Dren and it’s not like it's something I've…”

Then, because he didn’t want to ask, didn’t want to know, but found himself wanting it, anyway: “What’s it like?” He met Kav’s eyes. “What's she like?”

K'valas glanced over to her again. Still asleep, ragged remains of candidate robe pressed to her snout.

He didn't have the words to describe her. How could he find any words that could accurately convey the expanse of her, the headstrong creature that saw everything that made _him_ and created this little feral thing?

And…he realized, strangely, he didn't _want_ to describe her. The familiar possessiveness tugged in his chest. She was _his_ little feral thing. "I can't." He finally said with a shake of his head. "Look, whatever you're thinking about Dren…don't put that on this. It's not something you can make fair."

Aegaryn nodded, his gaze sliding away again. Better not to know more than what he did of her. The same way it was better for K’valas not to know that there was no choosing what remained of Drenorik, only what had settled in him like sediment, hard and curdled, and the slow understanding that it would not move. And that other bonds were less because of it, though he couldn’t have said how or why. Only that they were, that Dren’s shadow had made it so. “Yeah.” he agreed quietly. “It’ll be a while before there’s a clutch again. I’ve got time.”

"We've got all the time on Pern now." K'valas said. A lie, really. Sazikoth couldn't protect him from Thread any better than being holdless did. Only a matter of time then, only a matter of time now. He pulled Aegaryn to him again, chin resting against his dark curls. "Stay with me a while? Until she starts to wake up or until the 'staff catch us."

Aegaryn nodded again, grip tightening. Let the rest go, he told himself. Right now there was only this-- his hands circling up, his touch on K'valas’ neck, his jaw, Kav's breath in his hair, a proximity too close to explain, too long to excuse. But nothing else mattered while the faint sounds of his dragon sleeping behind them filled the alcove. Being together was enough.

Last updated on the May 1st 2026

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She's Wrong