“How can something so beautiful be so dangerous?”

“The danger is in its beauty.” Melissa is a dragon shifter, one of the last of her kind. Dragons were thought to have gone extinct, as the Werewolf King Carthane ordered for them to be destroyed. Mel and her father successfully evaded the Hunters sent to kill the dragons, but only for a short time. After her father’s murder she has to find a way to survive the wolves without him. One day she is running from a group of Hunters and is forced to escape into the forest. She never knew why her father told her to stay away from the mysterious beauty, but she was about to find out.

“I want all of them dead! Kill them all!” The man snarled viciously. The people near him flinched at the rage in his voice.

“Yes your highness,” a young man said with a bow before scurrying away, his voice quivering with fear.

All of the people in the room cowered at the man’s anger. He was their King, the Werewolf King, and he held extreme power over them all.

He would become honored and his command would be remembered for centuries, as it led to the end of the Fire Dragons, or so everyone thought.

◆◆◆

15 Years Later

The King was staring out the window in his office, thinking about his new wife, who was currently pregnant with their second child. She was sick though, and the doctors feared she wouldn’t survive long enough to give birth.

“Father? Why do the peasants tell stories of Fire Dragons? I thought they were just a myth.”

The King turned his head and saw his son lounging in a chair, staring at the ceiling, his eyebrows scrunched in confusion. "They were real, they have been turned into myth,” he said with a sigh.

“What happened to all of them?” His son asked curiously, turning toward his father.

“They were destroyed. I ordered for all of them to be hunted down and killed. They had been killing werewolves for centuries, but then a Fire Dragon killed your mother and your sister and I needed to put an end to the slaughter. She was only 12 years old, it was just after you turned 2,” the King told his son, his voice cracking with grief.

The son grew furious as the story of his mother and sister’s deaths continued to fill his thoughts. He began to hate dragons, even though he had never met or seen one.

“Are there any dragons left?” He asked his father.

“It is impossible to be sure, but I want you to promise me something,” the King paused.

“Of course, anything at all father,” he replied eagerly.

“If you ever find a Fire Dragon, I want you to torture and destroy it so that it feels the pain our family has suffered.”