The Bond That Almost Didn't Happen (A Letter to My Dragon)

Dear dragon,

You waited four years.

Four years at the edge of the treeline, watching a girl run toward every dragon that wasn't you. Four years of purple eyes in the shadows. Four years of patience so profound it didn't look like waiting — it looked like choosing to stay.

I think about you a lot when I think about what this book is actually about.

You're not the dragon people picture when they hear the word "dragon." You're small. Blue-gray, the color of a sky just before rain decides to fall. Pale blue markings around eyes that see too much. You're not the kind of dragon that makes people stop walking. You're the kind of dragon that makes one person stop running — eventually, after years of running in every other direction.

I almost didn't write you.

That's the truth I've been sitting with for a while now. There were a hundred easier choices. A brighter dragon. A louder story. Something that looked more like what fantasy is supposed to look like. You're small and you smell like rain and your sense of humor is terrible and you love Nova with a patience that costs you something I don't think she fully understood until the very end.

You were always exactly right.

Here's what I want to say to every reader who has ever felt like the blue-gray dragon — the one a little off to the side, the one nobody quite notices, the one that doesn't fit the description of what the moment is supposed to look like:

You were always exactly right too.

My dragon doesn't get to speak for most of the book. They're frozen by the curse, held in place, unable to close the distance. All they can do is wait and be present and trust that Nova will eventually choose to come toward them. That's not a small thing to endure. That's actually enormous. And when Nova finally reaches them — when she finally stops running from the thing that was hers all along — the bond that forms between them doesn't happen to her. She earns it. She chooses it. She walks toward it with full knowledge of what she's been doing for four years.

The bond cannot be forced. Only accepted.

That line is the whole book in six words.

You've been one of the most important things I've ever written. You taught me that the quiet, patient presence is always the most powerful one in the room. That being overlooked is not the same as being unimportant. That sometimes the thing that's been yours all along has simply been waiting for you to decide to see it.

Thank you for not leaving.

With love, Tori

Echo's Song: The Dragon Curse Saga Book One releases October 24th, 2026. Pre-order now at moonlightdreamsbooks.com/books.