Erin Luy had given me a map, a bag of perishables, a tin of peaches and whatever else she could scrounge up. She had given me too much. Too much to not expect something back. Too much from a woman who lived in a tiny apartment with a tiny baby.

She had given it to me to do the right thing. The good thing.

I wouldn't have done it for nothing.

But I wasn't good. Not anymore.

Tucked in the very bottom, rolled in a post-it notes, was a bundle of cash. Enough to keep me going for a while. Enough to get me somewhere. And she had left me a note on that post-it.

Good luck, Supernova. With that, there was a small photo. A cut out that was wrinkled and old. Two grinning girls with their arms thrown around each other. Nova and Erin: Erin's 16th birthday.

I had held that tight on first night under the stars on my way to Aplacina. Even in the night, I stared at those happy faces and tried to imagine my face making such an expression again.

Every day, I rose at dawn and began to walk. Along great stretches of empty road with my bag bouncing off my back. The sun rose high and I greeted her every morning as if she was a friend. I thought, maybe, if I greeted her every morning, that if I was ever locked in a white cell again, she would miss me and come to rescue me.

A silly thought, but I said good-day to her all the same.

Great trucks appeared sometimes to break the monotony of my walk like great beasts thundering on the horizon. When I raised a hand to wave, the great horns seemed to shake my skull and I laughed, left in the trial of dust and smoke.

I slept where I could, always just on the verge of sleep. Every noise woke me and set my nerves on edge, but I didn't really mind spending my night hours staring at the night sky. The worst nights were when the skies were heavy with clouds and I was stuck with no cover against the biting rain.

Five days into my journey, I strolled into a small town. I liked to think that I was on a great adventure – a wandering soul with no tethers, but I didn't think anyone else considered it that way. I smelled. I know I did and the cold water streams could only do so much to wash out my body.

Still, I kept my head down and headed towards the smell I caught right on the edge of the town. Coffee. The small café was tucked on the corner of an intersection and when I pushed my way in, my senses were assaulted with the scent of people, coffee and butter. I had never drank coffee before, but it smelled too good to my enhanced senses.

A young girl looked at me blandly as I approached the counter, staring at the menu board. Coffee. Coffee.

Latte? Mocha?

Lordie.

"Can I help you?" She asked sharply.

"I want a coffee. Please." I had a small bundle of notes in my hand. The rest were safely tucked away.

"What type of coffee do ya want? And what size?"

I didn't like the way she looked at me. The bland staring, the sharp tone. If this was the mad-maze, I would have her throat in my hands already.

But this wasn't the maze and I couldn't order a damn coffee like a normal person.

"Just a plain coffee. The largest I can get." I stared at her as she let out a small sigh, pushing away from the counter to make it. I waited awkwardly at the counter, sliding across the credits when she returned.

The girl eyed my dirty hands in disgust. There was soil and dirt crusted under my nails Shame darkened my cheeks. I had never showered in the mad-maze. Instead, the doctors had shackled me to the tiled floors of the bedroom and hosed me down with icy water. It had been humiliating but this was nearly worse.

I took my coffee to sit outside on a cold metal chair. The world passed me by in a blur of colour and when I took my first sip of coffee, I nearly smiled. Hot and bitter and beautiful. As I drank, I watched and as I watched, I learned.

This little town was mostly filled with humans. Bumbling, laughing humans. Some Lycans stalked through, but the humans paid them no mind. They lived together happily or it seemed so to me. A lot had changed in the last eight years- there had been Sectors. Humans and Lycans did not mix.

Though I was just a stranger here, I felt content enough to sit there and watch. No one was actively trying to kill me. I didn't have to watch every facial expression or response, wondering how it would be used to cause me more pain.

I could have watched the people forever. Their minuet expressions. The way they walked and turned and laughed and everything that came with living a 'normal' life.

Footsteps whispered close to me. Whoever it was dragged their feet. I kept my attention on the opposite street, but I was already tensing, waiting for a fight.

"Hi, honey." A woman croaked.

My gaze flicked up to the old lady to stood over me. "Yes?"

She glanced around her, her smile tight-lipped. "I manage the café here."

"Oh." I glanced back at it and several patrons who were staring out were suddenly engaged in very interesting conversations. "Your coffee is lovely ma'am. I haven't had some in a long time and this cup nearly makes up for it."

The woman grimaced. I took in her scent as I straightened. Human. Pungent with perfume. Under that... a lingering fogginess.

Strange.

"Well, see, miss."

"Meg." I pressed. "You can call me Meg."

Her grimace deepened. "Meg. I have been getting a few complaints. My patrons find your presence uncomfortable."

I titled my head. "How?"

She glanced back at the café. The girl who served me was watching it all with great interest. She held something small and black in her hands with a small light beaming from it.

"You are a stranger Meg and your smell...is offending people."

Aggression curled in my chest. "My smell is offending you?"

The manager looked over me critically. Coldly I stared back. I would not be cowed because of how I ended up here. I would not. Lowly, I said "If people get offended by my smell as I sit here minding my own business in the open air, then they are going to have a hard life."

"You'll scare away customers," the woman argued. "No one wants to have to pass a beggar to get a cup of coffee."

I rose and the woman startled as I loomed over her malevolently. Eight years of conditioning snarled at me to just split her open and let them smell guts spilling over the pavement. She scrambled back a few steps. "If you don't leave, I'll have to call the guards."

As if they could help you.

But I didn't want to there to be any suspicion around me. If I kept under the radar, I kept safe. "Fine."

I slung my bag over my shoulder, trying to quell the rise of rage. With rage came fangs and when the fangs came down, saliva flooded my tongue.

When that happened, all I wanted was blood and there were plenty of bags around me to burst. I stared at the patrons in the window, my lip curling into a snarl. None of them could look at me.

Bastards. A girl couldn't sit outside and drink coffee without offending them. The world had changed when I was in that little slice of hell and I would have to play catch up somehow. I kept my coffee with me as I strolled back along the streets. I kept clear of Lycans, preferring to walk amongst humans.

I left the little town behind gladly and read my map under a bare tree and drank the dregs of my now cold coffee. Aplacina was -- still days away. Days of long roads and wilderness. Broken by small towns and even then, when I got there, I would have to track the farmland for my family.

Lordie. I stood before I could feel sorry for myself. "You got this far, s112. This far without falling. What's another few days?" There would be no point in crying. I had spent years wishing for freedom and I would take every second of it. Every joy. Every hardship – I would take it if it meant I was free.

So, I walked until the night fell and my legs ached. I rested for a short while.

Then, I walked some more.

----------------------------

It was a beautiful day when I found them.

Dawn rose over the trees that morning. It shone over the stretching bare branches and slanted across the mucky ground. My shoes were caked in mud and I reminded myself to dry my socks later. I may have been a modified beast, but cold feet were good for no one. I had gorged myself on a sheep that I had caught in my other form; hunger for something hot and bloody had consumed me, but my heavy and full stomach had no room for guilt.

The warmth from the just-dead sheep had almost lulled me into the idea that I could sleep beside it and imagine it was another living soul, but that was just silly. Doc-Mai would have laughed at me for that.

I was crouched low in a copse of shrubbery, surveying the little farm below me. The land around me was rolling farmland and small, quaint houses. Here, the windows were open to the morning air and the smell of baking bread rolled out through the window. Clucking hens wandered in the front garden and as I watched, the blue-painted front door opened.

My head shot up, my fingers digging into the wet dirt. Hope, unbidden and unwanted, rose inside of me.

A young woman stepped outside. Dark hair spilled over her shoulder, and she was laughing as she shouted something back to the house. She wore a loose pair of over-alls and stumbled as she pulled on her wellies. Her laughter was clear, bright and unbidden.

I stood, my hands shaking.

"Nyssa." I whispered her name. A name that Doc-Mai had tried to wrench from me. I had given her nothing. No name. no identity.

Nyssa trudged along the front garden, kicking at the mud with her wellies. She was oblivious to my presence as she began to scrap her dark hair into a pony-tail, spinning around on her heel with a huff.

Eighteen.

Nyssa was eighteen. And I missed all of it. I had missed her first day in secondary school. Her first boyfriend. Her fights with friends. I missed showing how to do her hair and makeup.

Emotion knotted my throat.

"Are you coming or not?" Nyssa shouted into the house.

A lanky figure stepped out into the morning light, bearing a grimace. I recoiled this time, unable to keep myself steady as I took in Kale Linden; all long limbs and wild, curly hair.

"Rich of you to ask that, Nys." Kale's voice was deep. Grown up. Gone was the little boy who had begged me to help him with his homework and to sit down and watch his favourite shows with him on our tiny television. The apartment was gone. The twins were grown. Gone.

Kale trudged after her. "I asked you to help me with the foal!" Kale grumbled. "And you wouldn't even get up."

"Oh, you're well able to do it by yourself." Nyssa whirled around again, moving across the yard like she was a ballerina of a fantastic show. She had always liked dancing.

"Just because you're waiting for him to arrive, doesn't mean you can ignore all your chores!" Kale's voice was gritty with frustration. "It doesn't matter what way you do or your hair, Nyssa."

"It does matter," Nyssa stopped, mid-pirouette. "I can tell, Kale. He's coming by this week and I need to be prepared..."

"He's a busy man..." Kale interrupted her.

"And yet he always takes time to visit. Why? Because he has something to come and see." Nyssa shot back. "He came to my performance last month. Didn't he?"

"Nyssa!" Kale's voice dropped. "Don't be so dull. He's not coming to see you. He's not paying for your dance lessons for you."

"Don't be so mean!" Eight years had not erased Nyssa's famous pout. "Can't a girl dream?"

"Ugh," Kale trudged past her. "You're impossible."

"But you love me." Nyssa laughed and headed after him.

"Do I?"

Their conversation trailed off as they vanished into a large shed, but their laughter was still ringing in my ears. The sound of their harmless bickering too.

They were happy. They were happy here in this life; in this little farm where they tended to a few crops and cared for their animals. A small orchard backed the property and I could imagine them there, working hard but free.

This was a thousand – no, a million miles away from what my life had been for eight years. This place was not pain, blood and wrongness. This was a home.

But it was not my home.

And I couldn't bring my life into this peace.

I took a step back, feeling as if my limbs were made of lead. I had thought that seeing them after all this time would soothe some aching hole inside of me and magically fix me.

'Fool,' I snarled.

It only made everything worse. I knew the decision I had to make, but it was splitting me in two. I had come all this way. Only to turn back.

But this was not my home.

More importantly, they were happy and safe. Safe.

They were safe against the Ravi here. Safe without the threat of white walls and lightening rooms hanging over them. I knew what Doc-Mai would do to them if she found them and she would break them to break me and I would have lost.

And even if she did not find them, how could I prove that they were safe with me? I would only bring them anger and terror. I couldn't even remember how to use a knife and fork. I couldn't remember how to shower myself properly. Every smile was a threat and violence against an insult was ingrained in me.

The Omega too, who lingered under my skin like a malignant tumour, would bring nothing but problems. It would look for blood at the breakfast table, or during a board game.

No. I couldn't show myself. It would only be a matter of time before my presence brought them pain and I had caused them so much of that already.

So, I steeled myself once more and turned away from that little farm. In no particular direction at all and with no destination in mind, I walked.