I was frozen in place, not daring to move. That can’t be right. No way. Dragons aren’t real. I must have misinterpreted something else.

Then, I heard a song on the wind. The mellow baritone seemed familiar in a way I couldn’t place. Following after the man and the maybe-dragon felt like the stupidest thing I’d ever done, but that was the direction the song beckoned me, and I wasn’t about to quell the curiosity that crept over me.

At the edge of the tree line, I momentarily worried if there were bears. I laughed at myself, shaking my head in disbelief of my own thoughts. Really, Erin? You’re walking toward a dragon, and you’re worried about bears?

As I got closer, I realized the song was in a language I didn’t understand. Eventually, I came upon two men sitting by a fire. The dragon was nowhere in sight. I knew I wasn’t seeing right.

The man with crimson hair stopped singing and I froze; my mouth hung open when they both looked up at me. They were devastatingly gorgeous. Otherworldly. Ethereal. The kind of beauty no man had a right to. I blinked stupidly at them.

The man with raven-black hair and eyes that glinted gold in the firelight moved toward me and took my hand. I shivered as he kissed my fingers. And when he stared into my eyes, his eyes glowed the same color that the dragon’s forehead had. His gaze surrounded me, penetrated me, engulfed me. As he smiled seductively, I started to lose myself in his presence. The world around me blurred, and everything but him drifted from my mind.

“Grigore, that is enough,” the other man chided in an eastern European accent.

Grigore clicked his tongue and moved away from me.