It's going to depend on what the story is. I'd rather have the story begin in the right place. Noi and his sister have a perilous hatching and a perilous early life. Make that good enough and you don't need the human conflict.
Is your back cover blurb going to say that the dragons are major characters, that their struggle is an essential part of the story? Then you're writing for readers who are prepared to accept them as protagonists ... so long as the story is good.
Heinlein started =Starship Troopers= in an action scene, then went back and gave the history. But the struggle in his history was incidental. The struggle in yours is essential to the story.
There's a humorous example in =The Hunting of the Snark=, =Fit the Third=:
There was silence supreme! Not a shriek, not a scream, Scarcely even a howl or a groan, As the man they called "Ho!" told his story of woe In an antediluvian tone.
"My father and mother were honest, though poor—" "Skip all that!" cried the Bellman in haste. "If it once becomes dark, there's no chance of a Snark—We have hardly a minute to waste!"
"I skip forty years," said the Baker, in tears, "And proceed without further remark To the day when you took me aboard of your ship To help you in hunting the Snark.
"A dear uncle of mine (after whom I was named) Remarked, when I bade him farewell—" "Oh, skip your dear uncle!" the Bellman exclaimed, As he angrily tingled his bell.
"He remarked to me then," said that mildest of men, "'If your Snark be a Snark, that is right: Fetch it home by all means—you may serve it with greens, And it's handy for striking a light."
The start doesn't have to be an action scene. It has to be a point of departure, a place where the reader is ready to accept =Interesting Story Begins Here=. Action tends to involve jeopardy, so it's an easy place to start. But it's also a cheap start, almost a cliche.
Of course, if you're a fan of James Bond movies, opening with a chase scene that would be the high point of most movies is one of the conventions that define your genre. But compare that to the opening of =The Fast and the Furious=. I've never watched past the opening, but that opening is a =story= of its own, not just smash-crash-wake-to-find-Amy-suturing-you.
Make us care whether tha dragons survive. Make them characters-- Actually, you've already done that. Their opening is stronger that the openings of your human characters.
/2.718... . (That denominator is the limit [as n goes to zero] of the nth root of ( 1 + n ). A most wonderful number.)
