As much as I love this, my friend, I still strongly feel that aspect of defence is weakly articulated in this piece! I see that dragon is shielding her from something that is falling above, but it just seems to me that she is not in a right place (not shielded enough by the body of the dragon, she is not bellow him, but lies near him hugging his head).
Perhaps you should play a little bit with composition and pose of a girl.

But still your colors and lighting are freaking amazing, no doubt about that!

Sorry, but I'm still not seeing the defending angle either. Either move the woman more under the dragon, or raise the wings up covering her. Wings are basically hands, maybe have them splayed out protectively?

The main feeling coming across is a warm, tender moment between human and dragon, but to me there is no peril. I'm not seeing this attack that the dragon is defending against. There's smoke coming of its back, but it's a dragon with glowing fire in its chest! That could easily be mistaken as just coming from the the dragon naturally.

Hope you don't mind, but did a paint over just to demonstrate more of what I meant earlier.

Wow this is invoking a lot of emotion, I think the concept and description is really beautiful. I really loved the feeling of the older illustrations you had going on, but like many have said your composition is really strong and works well. Looking forward to seeing this finished

I still love this so much. For some reason the detail of the wing on the left is really lush lol you nailed painting the similar value set and getting all that detail in, I love that part

I'm excited to see more xD