A Gateway to Dragons — Kari Anne Kilgore

A New Life Hiding Just Out of Sight Rick Griffith plans a long-wanted return home to St. Louis.Then his beloved Memaw shares an unexpected surprise.Changing Rick's understanding of the world forever.But the crucial test of trust and acceptance awaits.Will Rick find approval in his new role, or only disappointment? Part of A Diversity of Dragons, an Uncollected Anthology An excerpt from A Gateway to DragonsA Secret Very Well Kept
Much to his surprise, Rick was indeed able to roll the big shelf to the side using only one hand.
And his jaw dropped at what he saw behind it.
The space wasn't huge, nowhere near as big as Memaw's library. If Rick didn't know this was the same level, he would have thought he was looking into someone's stone-lined basement.
But he'd never seen a basement where the gray stone walls glowed in violet streaks that gathered together in a pool spreading over the smooth dirt floor. Or one shaped like an oval, with the walls rounded toward the invisible ceiling.
Piles of what he thought were ordinary rocks had been stacked along the edges, with a much bigger pile along the far end of the oval. 
And in a depression in the middle of that pile rested two creatures he thought were huge lizards at first. Curled up together so he couldn't tell, but they seemed to be almost as long as he was tall.