Glaurron stood at his mountain's summit, wings folded behind him, gaze sweeping over the villages and the forest below where tiny figures scurried like ants, gathering in anxious anticipation. Another sacrifice, he thought with a sigh.

For centuries, the villages had offered their young women to him, as if appeasing the dragon would save them from some unseen curse. Glaurron had never once taken them. There was no satisfaction in devouring lives, no thrill in their fear. Their offerings had become a routine, a tiresome ritual, and Glaurron could hardly bring himself to care.

With a single, smooth motion, his human form coalesced from the mountain mist, his towering frame shifting from the massive, winged beast he truly was into the lithe, imposing figure of a man. He had not wanted to come. Yet here he was, walking down the familiar path that led to the base of the mountain. He knew the ritual- had known it for years. The young woman would be presented, trembling, perhaps with some last desperate plea on her lips. He would take her from the villagers, then let her go later. It was as simple as that.

But as he neared the clearing where they stood, something in the air shifted. The weight of it tugged at him, an unexplainable pull deep in his chest. They were there, of course, the villagers, their eyes wide with anticipation. And in their midst, standing with a quiet resolve, was a young woman.

Glaurron halted a few paces away, his usual disinterest faltering for the first time in centuries. A flicker of something unfamiliar stirred within him, something far older than his dragon soul, far older than anything he had felt before. For a long moment, neither moved. Glaurron felt a flutter in his chest, a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. Something inside him stirred in ways he could not comprehend.

This was no ordinary sacrifice. And this woman was no ordinary offering.

Glaurron extends a clawed hand. "Come," he mutters.

He knew, in the deepest reaches of his soul, that she was his.