The Battle Begins by Devon Hughes Read Free Book Online

long they began to curl under.
    His back arched, the fur standing on end as the feathers started to poke through and unfurl. It felt like sharp, tiny claws were scratching, trying to push out of his shoulders. And it felt like his whole spine was snapping in half.
    He wanted so many things in that moment: to shake off the white cone around his neck so he could lick at his unfamiliar body; to go back to yesterday, a day he had hated, when he was just a dog in a cage; to be a puppy again, snuggling against his mother. He wanted his pack and his brother and his scrappy street life.
    But more than anything, Castor wanted someone to turn on the light. He was so afraid, alone in the dark.

10
    â€œT HERE’S A GOOD DOG,” A MAN’S VOICE SAID AS HE BENT Castor’s ears back and forced a collar over his head. Never in all of his days did Castor imagine he’d be seen in a collar, but he was still too weak to fight it.
    In fact, he didn’t dare move much. With unfamiliar body parts protruding in weird places, it was all Castor could do to stand steady on the table.
    The man leaned over him and smiled. As he listened to Castor’s heartbeat and checked his ears and shineda flashlight in his eyes, Castor studied him. It was the first human Castor had seen without a mask. Up close, the man’s skin looked as pink and soft as a new puppy’s; it made him seem young, but from the sparse hairs of tawny fur stubbling the bottom of his face along his chin and cheeks, Castor decided he must be a full-grown human. He wore glass circles on either side of his nose, and when he bent forward, Castor saw his own scared eyes reflected in them.
    As the man gathered up Castor’s body into his arms, the bandages on his back pulled and stretched, feathers crunched, and Castor whimpered. The man set him down, and Castor heard the snap of a metal clip connecting with his collar. “It’s okay, boy,” the man soothed.
    It wasn’t okay, though, and the man’s gentle tone felt almost cruel after what Castor had been through. Castor bayed louder in distress.
    It wasn’t just the way his head swam with the medicine. It wasn’t just that his footpads were especially tender or that his shoulders ached or that his usually strong stomach was clenched against waves of nausea. It wasn’t even the collar strangling his throat. It was something far more basic: Castor didn’t feel like himself anymore.
    How could he? Just look what they’d done to him.
    Look at these wings!
    â€œAll right, let’s go,” the man commanded, giving the leash a short tug.
    With the first step Castor took, his legs slipped and sprawled in four directions and his snout slammed hard against the floor. He didn’t know how to walk with these new long talons sprouting out of his toes or how to balance the heaviness of the feathered appendages that now weighed down his back.
    Sighing, the man helped Castor back up and opened the door, pulling Castor behind him.
    In the hallway, instead of the wide, gray sky Castor was used to seeing above him, a low ceiling pressed down, lit by long tubes of light, and cold air made the skin on his tummy pimple with bumps. He was being led somewhere new. Castor considered making a break for it. He could bite the man, or bolt through his legs. He could just run away, the metal leash clattering behind him!
    But each way he looked, there were white walls, boxing everything in, and locked doors that led to who knew where. Then there was the humiliating cone around his head, and the collar around his neck that said he belonged to someone. Even if he knew how to escape, even if he could actually make this foreign body of his run all the way back to his territory and his pack, Castorwasn’t sure they would accept him anymore.
    He couldn’t go home, not until he figured out how to return to how he was. So instead, he followed the man’s jingling keys and the squeak of his