**Author's Note: If you have read Upon Wings of Change or any of my other dragonet stories, you may skip this prologue. This is a stand-alone to explain the world and has no bearing on the story.**

***

POV of a young wild dragonet

I knew the dream images weren't mine, but that didn't stop the terror that ran through me, as I felt every moment.

--

I was an academic nerd, not a jock. It made little difference as I did my best to fight off the men surrounding me. I felt the needle going into my arm, and the quick-acting drugs stopped my actions within seconds. My last thought was—why me?

I awakened several times because it was uncomfortably warm, but my body refused to listen to my mind, and I would drift back asleep within moments. Finally, I awoke fully, realizing the air was stagnant and I needed to escape my tight confinement. My fear of suffocating gave me strength. I pushed hard against the tiny box I was in repeatedly with no luck.

The crack I finally heard was deafening but welcomed. My hope rose higher and higher as I continued to make that crack bigger, and I could breathe clean air. It took longer than I thought my stamina would last, but I finally busted out of my confinement and landed on the cold floor, gasping for breath.

"It's okay. Just breathe."

The soft female voice was inside my head. I could hear machines running out loud and could easily tell the difference. I tried to turn my head and realized immediately that my body was moving oddly.

When I blinked my eyes open, what I saw made my heart beat hard.

I was in a glass cage, and several more were around me. Each occupant was a dragon from myth and legend, but solid colored and the same size as me. The cages protected me from them.

I pushed myself up to look around better, and when I saw a blue-clawed foot, I thought my heart would stop. Not wanting to believe what was happening, I closed my eyes and slowly checked every muscle in my body, noticing the different ways I could now move. I also felt something on my back that I could not identify but could move.

My eyes flew back open as I spun my head around to see my back, something a human could not do, and what I saw sent me into uncontrollable shivers, morphing rapidly into a full-blown panic attack.

I was a blue dragon.

Tiny scales covered my entire body, and I had a long, thin tail—not to mention wings. Wings!

"Just try to breathe. I know it's a lot to take in, but just try to breathe," the calm female voice said repeatedly.

I followed her advice and just breathed for a few minutes. Once I had a grip on my body change, I turned toward where I believed the female dragon was. I didn't understand how I knew which dragon was speaking. She was a golden color, and her eyes were a dark brown.

"Before I try to teach you to talk, there is something more important you need to know," she said quickly. "If you show any intelligence to the scientists who did this to you, they will kill you—and maybe us, too. If they show up, please act like a cat. Just hiss and swat at them."

When I tried to answer her, all that came out were chirps and whistles. But I could understand what I said, even though it was just sounds.

"This is the dragonet language. We can all use it," she said, also making weird sounds. "But it's better to talk this way. Just focus on me and send a thought," she continued in my mind.

It took me a while, but I eventually got a single word sent to her.

"Why?"

"These scientists found an alien recipe on a crashed spaceship. They have been kidnapping people to use it on. We are the few that survived the metamorphosing. Most die."

At that moment, the door opened, and all the other dragons, or dragonets, as she called them, started hissing. The giant humans descended the walkway before the cages. We must have been about the size of house cats.

"Excellent!" the man with the white coat and clipboard exclaimed. I watched as he pulled out a recorder. "Specimen 5385089 has hatched and appears fully grown with blue scales. No abnormalities are apparent. We will review him in detail when the head doctor arrives in the morning."

He clicked the recorder off and headed to a cabinet at the end of the aisle. Within a minute, he returned with a cart filled with what seemed to be food and water bowls.

It was at that moment the fear took over. I realized I was no longer human. 

My life was gone forever.

--

I awoke from the nightmare with a jolt and a whine. My mother was close by and nudged me with her muzzle as she sent the feeling of love through the mind link.

"Are you okay?" she asked through our link.

"It's just a bad dream," I told her. Since lies are easily felt through the link, I knew to stay as close to the truth as possible. "I just need a minute."

"If you need me, I'm here." She nudged me again before moving away.

I took a moment to review other memories that belonged to my dad. The Blood Memories that were passed to us through our parents were easy to access, and I had some control over which ones I pulled, at least while I was awake.

Through my dad's eyes, I witnessed the attack on the lab and the explosion of the wall in their room. My dad's cage had broken, and his determination drowned out the yelling of the terrified dragonets as he opened their cages to set them free. They flew out of the building through the downed wall and witnessed an army with tanks firing up to the sky.

When my dad looked up, fear overpowered his shock at seeing the alien ship because he quickly realized the yellow beam of light coming from its bottom center was reducing any human it touched to a goo-like substance. The dragonets weren't that far from the ship, and it was moving rapidly.

"FLY!" someone yelled.

I felt my father's horror when they all realized they could not out-fly that beam of light.

I also felt their relief as it passed harmlessly over them.

They weren't human anymore.

My breathing slowed down as I stopped the memory before it could go into the grief that came from knowing all my dad's human friends and family were dead. I curled up into a ball and picked more memories showing the white aliens, called the Votaks, creating their own cities after completely demolishing anything related to the humans.

I couldn't hide my smirk when I pulled up the memories of the Kymari showing up and killing the Votaks for their treachery. The Kymari were mortified and livid that any race killed off another just to take over a planet when there were billions available in the endless amount of galaxies. The Votaks on this planet didn't survive their encounter with the Kymari.

The Kymari demolished what the other aliens had started to build and occupied the planet to prevent the Votaks from returning.

As my dad and the others watched from afar, the Kymari, ten-foot-tall, green, human-like creatures, created large cities surrounded by walls to keep out the earth animals and the alien animals that the Votaks had released onto the planet. The alien animals had killed off over half of the earth's natural species, and I could feel my dad's devastation over this. These brutal animals also wanted to make snacks of the dragonets.

During one of the earliest battles between the dragonets and the animals that saw them as prey, they learned something about themselves that never came to light during their years in the lab.

They could breathe fire.

It took some time for all of them to figure it out, but dragonets could breathe a stream of fire and fireballs at any time they chose—not just in a deadly situation. The other significant discovery was what they termed the Morning Song.

Every day, even on stormy dark days, when the light rose past the horizon, they felt a pull from the sun itself. This pull was overwhelming to their dragonet senses. They had to praise the dawn of the new day they had been given. The exhilaration demanded they sing and do a flying dance until the sun rose. The feelings of pure ecstasy also took away all the depression and fear they felt day to day.

I felt better after I pulled up one of Dad's memories of the Morning Song. The blissful feelings quickly overcame the horror of the nightmare and the previous memories I had pulled.

Stretching out my front and back paws, I looked lazily at the memories of them sneaking into a Kymari city, and to the enormous park in the center of the town. The dragonets had agreed unanimously that it would be safer there, as the only wild animals they would have to fear were foxes, snakes, and birds—unlike the fearsome creatures on the outside that were not afraid of their flame.

They also agreed on something else.

They would never trust another species with the secret that they were sentient animals. The dragonets had no way of defending themselves against any technology. As long as these aliens believed them to be the 'singing lizards', they were safe.

Hopefully, no one would ever cage them—us—again.