MATED TO A DRAGON

The village of Oakhaven had sacrificed a maiden to the mountain every ten years for as long as anyone could remember. This year, it was my turn. My name is Elara Finch, and I am nineteen years old. I have never been outside the valley. I have never seen the sea. And this morning, my mother braided my hair with white flowers, the same flowers they put on graves. "The Dragon demands purity," Elder Mara said as she tied my wrists with silk. Not rope, silk. As if that made it kinder. "You should be honored, child. You will save us all." I wanted to spit at her feet. Oakhaven was not saved. We were cursed. For a hundred years, our crops failed every third summer, our children were born sickly, and our winters lasted too long. The Elders said a dragon on Mount Stryga was angry, that he had claimed this valley as his territory and required a tribute. A bride. No girl ever returned. The path up the mountain was lined with villagers. They did not look at me. My mother was crying into her apron. My father stared at the ground. My little brother, Tomas, broke from the crowd and ran to me. "Elara, don't go!" he screamed, grabbing my silk-bound hands. Elder Mara pulled him away. "It is for the good of the village." I walked. The air grew thinner as I climbed. The trees of Oakhaven, green and soft, became black pines and then nothing but jagged rock. The wind cut through my thin white dress. The dress they gave every sacrifice. It was beautiful and it was worthless. It would not keep me warm in death. At the summit, there was a temple. Not a ruin, but a living temple carved straight into the mountain itself. Massive columns of black stone rose fifty feet high, and between them, a darkness that was not just shadow. It was a mouth. I stopped at the threshold. My heart was beating so loud I was sure the mountain could hear it. "I am here!" I shouted, my voice cracking. "I am Elara Finch of Oakhaven! Take your tribute and leave my people alone!" Silence. Then, the wind stopped. The darkness inside the temple moved. Two eyes opened. They were not eyes like any animal. They were molten gold, each larger than my entire body, with a vertical slit of black. They stared down at me, and I understood true fear for the first time in my life. This was not a beast. This was ancient. This was intelligent. "Another one," a voice rumbled. It was not spoken. It vibrated in my chest, in my bones, in the rock beneath my feet. "They send me another frightened lamb." I fell to my knees. The silk on my wrists burned. "I am not a lamb," I whispered, because I could not bear to die as a lamb. A laugh shook the mountain. Dust fell from the columns. The darkness shifted, and he stepped into the light. He was not what I expected. I expected scales, wings, claws. But what emerged from the temple was a man, or something shaped like a man. He was impossibly tall, his shoulders broad, his skin marked with faint black scales that caught the light like armor. Long black hair fell past his waist, and two curved horns, black as obsidian, rose from his head. His chest was bare, and a long, powerful tail swayed behind him. And those eyes, those terrible golden eyes, never left mine. He was beautiful. He was terrifying. He was a Dragon. "Not a lamb?" he said, his voice now a low, human growl that was somehow worse. He crouched before me, and I could smell smoke and snow and something wild. "Then what are you, little human?" My silk bindings came loose. He cut them with a claw I had not seen. His hand was warm, impossibly warm. "My name is Elara," I said, forcing myself to look up. "And if you are going to kill me, do it quickly. Do not make me wait for it." His golden eyes narrowed. Something flickered in them, surprise, perhaps. "Kill you?" He tilted his head. "Who told you I kill the sacrifices?" "The Elders. No girl ever returns." He stood, and I had to crane my neck to see his face. "No. They never return. Because I never let them return to that miserable village that throws its daughters away." He turned and walked back into the temple, and he expected me to follow. His tail brushed the stone. "Come, Elara Finch. If you are not a lamb, prove it. Walk into the dragon's den on your own two feet." My legs shook. Behind me was the path down to Oakhaven, to a life where I was already dead to them. Before me was darkness and a dragon who did not kill, but kept. I stood up. The white flowers fell from my hair, scattered by the wind. I walked into the darkness. The temple was warmer inside than out. The walls glowed with veins of amber light. And in the center, there was not a nest of bones, as the stories said, but a library. A home. And a massive, coiled shadow on the far wall that was his true form. He was watching me. "What is your name?" I asked. For a long time, he said nothing. Then he whispered one word, and the whole mountain seemed to whisper it with him. I wondered what was really going on and I screamed, and he told me not to be afraid of any body or anything until I was calm and I relaxed,he started showing me little bit of a love and he never did anything bad to me,I thought I would die and nothing bad happened to me at the moment and everything started feeling much rea and I was really happy about it and it really t