And if you're not totally fed up with the "women and dragons" theme yet, although the main human/other species bond in Naomi Novik's "dragons in the Napoleonic Wars" Temeraire series is between two males, the aerial Dragon Corps that the protagonists belong to also includes female officers. Of course, this seems to have happened largely because one particular breed of dragon, the Longwings, will only bond with female captains. (One of the prepubescent midshipmen riding along with human series protagonist Will Laurence on his Chinese Imperial dragon Temeraire is a girl--although since she has short hair and dresses like a boy, it takes Laurence a while to figure this out--but as far as I can tell from the two and a half books in the series I've read so far, all of the few female officers who command their own dragons have bonded with male-averse Longwings.)
Unfortunately, the readers see little or nothing of the British female dragon captains, at least, after the first book, "His Majesty's Dragon," since all the sequels seem to involve Laurence and Temeraire traveling around the world on various government missions. But the unorthodox by contemporary standards attitudes toward women as professionals, and as the captains of their own romantic and childbearing destinies, within the clannishly secretive Dragon Corps constitute a significant part of the cultural adjustment the much more conventional former navy captain Laurence has to make after the newly-hatched Temeraire imprints on him. And, within the structure of the series, the anachronistically liberated approach to gender issues personified by the female Dragon Corps members is inextricably linked to the crucialness of the dragon/human bond and the Longwings' insistence on female captains.
Also, if you want to examine the human/animal bond from the "animal" side of the equation at all, when Laurence and Temeraire travel to China in the second book, "Empire of Jade," they encounter an albino female dragon who is fiercely devoted to the Imperial prince who, despite the widespread Chinese aversion to albino dragons, chose to bond with her. Unfortunately, this prince turns out to have major political ambitions whose success would have drastic repercussions for both his father the Emperor and British hopes of diplomatic relations with China, and his dragon aids him in attempting to fulfill these schemes. When the prince is killed as a result, the grieving dragon vows vengeance, and at the end of the book is obviously being set up to return as a villain in her own right later in the series. So in this case the human/"animal" bond functions much like the trope of the woman led astray by her love of a reprehensible man, whether in the traditional melodramatic context of being seduced or pimped out and becoming a "fallen woman," or the superhero comics context of committing crimes or acts of terrorism out of familial or romantic love (like mutant terrorist Magneto's non-inherently villainous daughter the Scarlet Witch or, to some extent, Harley Quinn, who, though obviously mentally unstable, might have stayed on the right side of the law if she hadn't fallen in love with the Joker).
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Unfortunately, the readers see little or nothing of the British female dragon captains, at least, after the first book, "His Majesty's Dragon," since all the sequels seem to involve Laurence and Temeraire traveling around the world on various government missions. But the unorthodox by contemporary standards attitudes toward women as professionals, and as the captains of their own romantic and childbearing destinies, within the clannishly secretive Dragon Corps constitute a significant part of the cultural adjustment the much more conventional former navy captain Laurence has to make after the newly-hatched Temeraire imprints on him. And, within the structure of the series, the anachronistically liberated approach to gender issues personified by the female Dragon Corps members is inextricably linked to the crucialness of the dragon/human bond and the Longwings' insistence on female captains.
Also, if you want to examine the human/animal bond from the "animal" side of the equation at all, when Laurence and Temeraire travel to China in the second book, "Empire of Jade," they encounter an albino female dragon who is fiercely devoted to the Imperial prince who, despite the widespread Chinese aversion to albino dragons, chose to bond with her. Unfortunately, this prince turns out to have major political ambitions whose success would have drastic repercussions for both his father the Emperor and British hopes of diplomatic relations with China, and his dragon aids him in attempting to fulfill these schemes. When the prince is killed as a result, the grieving dragon vows vengeance, and at the end of the book is obviously being set up to return as a villain in her own right later in the series. So in this case the human/"animal" bond functions much like the trope of the woman led astray by her love of a reprehensible man, whether in the traditional melodramatic context of being seduced or pimped out and becoming a "fallen woman," or the superhero comics context of committing crimes or acts of terrorism out of familial or romantic love (like mutant terrorist Magneto's non-inherently villainous daughter the Scarlet Witch or, to some extent, Harley Quinn, who, though obviously mentally unstable, might have stayed on the right side of the law if she hadn't fallen in love with the Joker).