No Matter What You Do, Stick With The Pack

Chapter 12

A/N~ Okay, real quick. Thank you, whoever you are, for reading No Matter What You Do, Stick with the Pack. You are a huge help in my effort to to get published someday. After this goes through some Beta readers and editing, I am going to offer it as a free ebook on Smashwords, so if it's not to much trouble please give me your honest feedback, tell me what you want in this story. After you're done, visit http://beccalathorn.weebly.com/thank-you-with-your-help-with-stick-with-the-pack.html to get a treat from yours truly! Again, thank you for your help! 

~Becca. 

          Yes, it was a long journey to Canada. In actual time it took about a month. To me, felt like years. Learning to live on my own, spending all that time separating myself from the only life I’d ever known, the memory of my family and pack already fading, it change me. Somehow I felt stronger, more sturdy. That, and lonely.

            And even after I got out of the states, I had a long way to go. Finding a place in British Columbia, for one, was hard. I ended up in a small town, so much more different from Markwood. It was beautiful with its coziness. Just the right kind of warm too. Abaline, I think the village was called. And it was perfect for me, surround by forest yet not a werewolf in site. Not surprising, considering how little game there was. No problem for me, problem for twenty-odd something pack.

            And so I tried to settle into Abaline, getting a job immediately upon coming at a little book shop singing in there café. It was in there that I learned that I actually enjoyed reading. During breaks I’d sneak a book off the shelf and read it in the bathroom, hoping not to get caught. It was rare that I was successful in this venture.

            But still, I hardly had enough to get my own place to live. And thank God I ran into Axel in Washington, or else I’d be dead in the water when it came to passports and ID. But seriously, I had barely enough to find get an apartment. (Never mind the money that was left in the Jeep, I was still too uncomfortable spending it.) Those nights spent either in the woods or in the back seat of the Jeep were killing me, most night’s I’d have to change just too get to sleep.

            “Maddy-Dan.” My manger one day called me off right in the middle of a shift. “You smell like piss. When was the last time you took a shower?” My manager, Cale Nelson, was a short plump Hispanic woman with deep dark almond-shaped eyes and olive skin, who often treated me like her younger sister in her own twisted little way. Hell, when she interviewed me she said, “Goddamnit, someone give this girl a sandwich before she faints.” I’m convinced she only hired me just so she’d have an excuse to give me money. I checked, the café didn’t have a singer before I came along. But after discovering I had, what she called, “the voice of a million baby angels lamenting” she kept me on for more than a week.

            And it wasn’t only her. The whole town seemed to keep me as their pet, giving me discounts on the stuff I bought and always offering to make me dinner. Everywhere I looked someone was calling out to me “Maddy Dan, come ‘ere, I need to fix something” or “Maddy Dan just stop right there so that I can give you a hug.” Hell, one of the first nights I was here was the full moon and someone caught me driving out of town to the woods. Next morning I get back and start my shift and everyone’s cheering, Cale coming up and squeezing me, babbling about how she was so scared that her Maddy Saddy had left already.

            I shrugged, getting back to the present. “Sink showers, about a week ago.”

            She crinkled her nose. “No baby girl, I mean a real shower, with shampoo and hot water.”