I dislike exposition as much as the next guy, no disagreements there, but I’m concerned if you think that’s the only way to develop characters.
Hell, I found the writing so far has been fairly exposition heavy in my opinion. The same tendency to be ‘utilitarian’ and very direct in the writing when it comes to character development seemed to happen with worldbuilding too.
The same way the writing made very obvious that the human cared about the children, that he is horny for dragons and that he is unhappy with his place in life was also applied to the worldbuilding. The internal monologues of the mcs mostly tell you everything straight. It’s not like the scene of the dragon mc walking down the street was particularly subtle in demonstrating the town’s bigotry towards dragons, and it wasn’t the first nor last one to be like that.
It’s not bad, mind you, just not for everyone’s taste. That and it’s just something that in my experience very often came with the aforementioned ‘carboard cutout’ characters I also personally dislike, which is why I made these comments: haing read the story so far I worry the mc will turn into the archetypal ‘dumb horny human in a gay furry story’.