Page 6 of What's Rogue Got To Do With It

Gravel Ridge was a dead end and I headed back to the highway. But as I passed the grocery store, a paper flapping in the wind had me turn my head. I’d missed the community bulletin when I’d walked past the first time. It was covered with notes offering babysitting services, used cars for sale, and another looking for a lost cat. But one flyer caught my attention.

Seasonal Help Wanted for the apple harvest. Fair wages, start immediately. Contact Stan MacFarlane at MacFarlane Orchards.

Below the text was a hand-drawn map giving directions to the farm. I calculated it was about three miles east of town. Farm work was backbreaking but as a shifter I was strong and had more endurance than humans. Also the pay was usually terrible, but I might be able to sleep in a barn. There were worse places.

Another advantage to working on a farm was the farmer cared about an employee’s work ethic and if they had strong backs and arms. They paid cash, asked few questions, and didn’t insert themselves into their workers’ lives.

I studied the map. The orchard sat at the end of a road that wound through farmland and forest. Being isolated was perfectbecause I could earn money and there’d be no curious neighbors sniffing around.

It was getting late and if I wanted to reach the farm before dark, I needed to get moving. According to the map, I could get there on the main road but it wound its way around the countryside, not taking a direct route to the farm. If I cut through the woods that bordered the town to the east, I would get there faster and the forest was my home.

Our home!

My beast could navigate underbrush and rough terrain, and in my human form, my shifter reflexes and enhanced senses helped avoid obstacles and find my way. I wouldn't have to worry about passing cars wondering who the stranger was walking along the road.

I headed toward the treeline. The woods welcomed me and I inhaled the aroma of grass, moss and pine. While my beast longed to be part of a pack, being part of a group with rules and hierarchies had its disadvantages. While in the woods, I could pretend all was right with my life.

My wolf demanded to shift but until I had secured the job and scouted around for small cabins or hunters, I refused, and followed a deer trail that headed in the right direction.

It was almost dark and too late to speak to the farmer who would be an early to bed, early to rise kinda person. But I had snacks in my pack and my wolf could curl up under a tree for the night.

As I strode through the trees a sharp metal click punctuated the silence along with pain that exploded through my left foot and calf. Something clamped onto me, piercing the skin andreminding me of the fangs belonging to a rogue wolf I’d fought after leaving the pack.

My beast yelped, echoing my cries and when I glanced down the teeth of a leg-hold trap were buried in my calf and my pants leg was seeped in blood. Black spots danced in front of my eyes as I dropped to my knees. Who would set a trap this close to town? And why hadn't I smelled any human scent on the metal?

My hands shook as I tried to pry the trap's jaws apart, but even with my supercharged strength, I couldn’t do it. Every movement sent fresh waves of pain up my leg. My wolf begged to shift, but he couldn’t escape either and if whoever set the trap found they’d snared a wolf, they might kill us.

I’d dropped the pack with my phone and couldn’t reach it. Besides, there’d be no signal as I had one bar in town.

I'd avoided pack alphas, humans, and shifter politics, but was felled by a piece of rusty metal in the middle of nowhere.

4

CREVEN

I didn’t need a lot of money. After a rough few months, I’d managed to find a cabin in the woods that had been left vacant for decades. The earliest cans in the pantry were from before expiration dates existed. And aside from needing some major roof repairs, the rest of it was livable until I could fix it up. If the owners came by, I’d deal with that then, but the odds were very much in my favor.

While the housing was free and my fox able to hunt most of our meals, there were some things I needed to buy. As careful as I’d been with it, my money situation wasn’t as solid as I’d hoped it would be. It had gotten to the point where I didn’t have a lot of choices to make more, either.

I couldn’t go to a town where shifters were part of the business community. I’d be blackballed so fast I doubted I could find a human restaurant or warehouse that would hire me.

And towns that were mostly human hadn’t done well for me. The people tended to be put off by my beast, not really understanding why, just that I made them uncomfortable. It wasn’t intentional. Try as I did to hide my beast, he was alwaysthere. The few times I attempted to get a job including the most un-sought after jobs in town, they wanted no part of me.

If I had internet, I could find some online gigs. But my place didn’t have cell reception, too deep into the woods. Heck, it didn’t have any electricity. I ran my fridge and hot water using a generator. Unless I set out to find a new home, that was off the table.

My fox loved to run through these woods and staying felt right. There were days, however, when he got a little too distracted by his hunt that he ended up near a road. That's when I discovered just how gross humans were. It was embarrassing how much garbage lined the woods from cans to wrappers to full on trash bags people didn’t take all the way to the dump.

Unable to let it go, I started cleaning the roadside. I picked up a huge box of trashbags at the local grocery store and set out to do one or two a day. I took the trash to the dump and cashed in the bottles and cans. What started as a nice thing to do ended up bringing in enough money to keep my generator running without dipping into my limited funds. It felt like a win-win.

But there was more than just trash and cans left in the gullies and one day Joe, from the dump, asked why I never sold any of the metal. And the truth was, I didn’t know I could do that. From that day on I had my dump run, my can run, and I saved all the metal and scrapped it when I collected it.

Scrapping didn’t pay much, not unless I was lucky and found copper. But it was a way to make money while making my new home more habitable.

One of the first purchases I’d made was an ancient pick-up truck. It was so bad that the passenger side floor had a section youcouldn’t put your foot on for fear of it going through. Not that I had any passengers. Other than the polite thank yous that came with my small purchases and a random conversation with Joe, I was all alone.

But the truck worked and once it was filled with the metal, it was worth the trip two towns over to scrap it… usually. The first time, it was only $20. The second time, another $20 and change. But over time, it added up. And now it became almost like a game, something to keep my brain occupied—a treasure hunt. I learned how to strip wire when there was copper inside. Those were the good finds.

Today wasn’t supposed to be a scrapping day. I hadn’t planned to leave the cabin at all, but my fox insisted on it. He’d been restless from the time I woke up and became increasingly pushy. I couldn’t remember a time he’d ever been this bad.

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