Alpha Assignment (GL) Chapter 20 (Early Access) (Patreon)

In the centre of the sofa Remi was waiting, doll-like again, when Quinn burst into the living room.

“A-Alpha!” Remi jumped up to her feet. “You’re hom-”

She only had half an hour to set things right before she had to be back at her desk, no time for preamble. “Remi, we need to talk.”

Remi lowered herself slowly back to the sofa, tiny hands on bare knees and eyes wide. “Yes, Alpha?”

Quinn squatted, her shoulders falling in line with Remi’s. Attempting to lessen her overbearing stature.  “I understand that you’re used to a certain way of living, and that can be hard to break free from, but this house-” Quinn shrugged at the room around them. “-Is not a pack house. And we are not a pack.”

The second statement pinched Remi’s face, her bottom lip poking out just a little further and small fluffy eyebrows creasing in the centre.

“I am not giving you orders,” Quinn continued, keeping her tone as gentle and even as possible. “We are equals living under one roof and we each need to be thinking of ourselves. You need to take care of yourself and make your own decisions, and I need to make mine without thinking you’re watching for commands all the time.”

Remi’s expression had become sullen.

“Do you understand, Remi?”

“That is not what an alpha is supposed to do,” Remi whispered, eyes dropped to where her curled fists rested.

“I don’t need to be told what I’m supposed to do,” Quinn huffed, her irritation from the night before flooding back. “I have no interest in doing what an alpha is supposed to do.”

“But Alpha-”

“I don’t need schooling, Remi,” Quinn snapped. “I am not the ignorant one here!” She regretted the words the moment they were past her lips. They both gasped a little in response. “Remi, I didn’t-”

“I am only trying to be good, Alpha.” The croak in Remi’s voice stabbed at Quinn’s heart, a signal of oncoming waterworks. Tears teetered on her lash lines and Quinn’s hands twitched to squeeze her cheeks and wipe them before they could fall. With a sniff, Remi managed to raise her voice to add, “It is the rules!”

“Why are you so obsessed with up-keeping these stupid rules?” Quinn groaned. “There’s no one here enforcing them.” She forced a weary smile, encouraging Remi to bask in her new freedom. “You can stop the subservient act.”

Remi remained obstinate while wobbling on the edge of tears. “I don’t know what that means, Alpha,” she said stubbornly.

“It means stop playing house like you love being someone’s servant.” Exasperation bubbling back up to the surface in the face of Remi’s refusal to listen. Not because she was an omega, and should listen to her alpha, but because Quinn was right. And she would die on that hill. “You have freedom all around you, so why are you pretending not to want it?”

“With all respect, Alpha, I’m not playing house.” The attitude in Remi’s words was nothing like her standard demure, omega behaviour. Her frustration was finally showing, and Quinn realised they may just be doomed to argue in a loop forever, because the fire in Remi’s eyes told Quinn she wasn’t the only one with a hill to defend. “I am fulfilling my role in the pack house! I am doing all of my duties-”

At the top of her own hill, Quinn’s restraint broke. “No one is asking you to! If I needed a cleaner I would hire one. I can afford to eat out any time I want, but I don’t. And this isn’t a pack house! You’re squatting in my house! You don’t pay bills or my mortgage. Do you understand how hard it is to own a home as a single person? Of course you don’t.” Remi was frozen solid, eyes shining with tears, but somehow, Quinn couldn’t stop now that her floodgates had opened. “You have no concept of what it’s like to try and live in the human world. You’re used to wolf packs and their land passed down for a hundred generations and the entitlement that comes with it. I don’t have a family to pass down land to me. I worked for this. In the human world, where no one cares about alphas and omegas. If they knew how we lived in those packs they would call it a cult. I entered human society without so much as a bank account.” Quinn was breathing hard, her outburst almost winding her. “And now I’ve made my own life the way I want it - all by myself.”

Remi’s gaze dropped to her knees again, shoulders limp and curly bangs dishevelled. “And now I have come along and ruined it,” she muttered.

“I am not blaming you for your arrival-”

“But you wish I hadn’t.”

Not anymore. The two words burned at the tip of her tongue.

“I have never resented you for being here,” Quinn assured her. “It’s the Assembly’s fault.”

Remi stared at her, bottom lip wobbling.

“Look,” Quinn said with a sigh. “We need to move past this, and for that I need you to let go of the rules. Please, Remi. These rules represent everything I ran away from and I can’t bear to have them brought back into my home.”

Remi’s stare was stubborn, a single tear slithered down a plush pink cheek.

“Remi, we cannot share a space like this,” Quinn whispered gently.

Remi lowered her face, submissive but without agreement.

Quinn sighed again. “Okay, we can talk more when I get home from work, but I need to head back to the office now.”

“Yes, Alpha.”

“Do whatever you like while I’m away, okay? The freedom is yours now.”

“Yes, Alpha.”

“Maybe a movie?” Quinn suggested as she slung her bag back over her shoulder.

Remi didn’t respond and Quinn had run out of time. She hurried back to her car and spent the afternoon brainstorming better ways to encourage Remi to live life the way she wanted. Quinn hadn’t meant to be mean or cruel, she just wanted Remi’s chains broken. Leant in close over the crack between their desks, Quinn gave Jordan a speedy debrief of her failure. Jordan winced throughout the retelling and advised her to just keep trying. Quinn couldn’t blame her for the weak support, it was all she could think to do too. She was predicting a rough night… and possibly a whole weekend of arguments and crying. At what point did it stop being worth it to convince Remi to accept all that life had to offer? Maybe she was happier in her role as she called it…

She clocked off a few minutes early and no one said a word about it. The department head had hovered at her desk earlier for an informal check-in, letting Quinn know that she was a valued member of the team and any support she needed was just an ask away. Her change in behaviour in recent weeks had been noted, but the wrong conclusion had been drawn from it. Quitting was not the issue on Quinn’s mind, but she appreciated the support nonetheless.

There was no sound in the house when she got in, not until Quinn sighed. Remi hadn’t taken up her movie suggestion then. First stop was the living room to dump her things, and there was no Remi perched in the sofa crack waiting for her. Quinn hummed and moved to the kitchen, but she didn’t find Remi nose-deep in an ice-cream container like she hoped. Upstairs, Remi’s bedroom door was open, and the inside was empty. A cold feeling settled on the back of Quinn’s neck.

“Remi?” she called.

No answer.

She sniffed the air, but Remi’s scent was already a staple in her home, and it gave her nothing to follow. She yelled her name now, loud enough that any wolf could hear her from half a mile away. No response. She tore through the house, checking every room and pushing out the bond for connection, but it was clear immediately that Remi was not there.

Panic pulsing through her veins, Quinn ran back to her phone and found a number she rarely used, despite the owner’s encouragement.

“Quinn?”

“Jordan, she’s gone!”

“What? Who?”

“My friend, the one staying with me, I think she’s run away.”

“Fuck! How far could she have gotten?” There was a bell ring in the background. “Does she drive?”

“No, and she’d never use public transport because of all the strangers.” A four-legged run was faster than you’d think, though, even with such little legs. Quinn put her phone on speaker mode and started searching online for wolf sightings in the county. Surely Remi wouldn’t be naive enough to run around like that in front of humans… but she might feel too vulnerable in her two-legged form-

“Okay,” Jordan announced, cutting off Quinn’s thought spiral. “I’m getting off the bus and we’ll search for her. Text me places she might go and a photo of her.”

“I-I don’t have any photos of her…” Quinn admitted.

“Okay, a description then.”

“Thank you, Jordan. You’re the best.”

“I know. Now hurry, the quicker we start searching the sooner we’ll find her.”

They hung up, and Quinn stared down at the text box for a few moments. Where would Remi go? She couldn’t imagine Remi heading outside the house without Quinn at all. The only places she knew were the leisure centre and the park, she sent both locations to Jordan, along with the description: Her name is Remi and she has black hair to just under her ears, it curls at the ends, normally with a small chunk tied up. Black eyes, very tiny all over, probably dragging a kid suitcase with her.

Jordan replied with a thumbs up and shared her live location, speeding down streets already.

But where else? Without any other leads, Quinn ran to the door, settling on searching the immediate area first. Remi might have changed her mind and gotten lost, or been spooked by a human and hunkered down somewhere to hide. As she reached for the door, a thick A4 envelope caught her eye.

Remi’s file.

Quinn hesitated.

It was wrong to invade Remi’s privacy, but it might have a location… maybe even a photo. Quinn shook her head, she would search first. If it turned out Remi was a hundred metres down the road, hiding in a bush, she’d feel horrible for reading her personal business. It would be her last resort.

Within an hour, Quinn was pelting back home to her last resort. Jordan had found no sign of Remi at the leisure centre, and Carla had recognised the description Jordan was repeating at the front desk - Remi hadn’t been there all day, but they would double check the CCTV and have the staff keep an eye out. Now Jordan was roaming the park, yelling Remi’s name at trees. Quinn had lost Remi’s scent almost immediately after stepping off the drive, which meant she hadn’t been here for hours. She lapped the neighbourhood in widening circles, sniffing the air madly and drawing looks from joggers and parents pushing prams. Nothing. She’d stretched the bond until it was thread thin, but there was no wolf detected, let alone willing to let her in.

The envelope was in shreds, Quinn’s pants fluttering the stack of papers in her hands. The front door was still open a crack and she kicked it closed without looking away from the forbidden file. Maybe forty pages of paper, with a glossy polaroid paper-clipped to the top, and a yellow post-it note stuck to the front page.

The woman in the polaroid resembled Remi, but sickly thin and pale. Hair stringy rather than fluffy. And bruised all over. It was only a head-and-shoulders shot, but every section of this other Remi’s skin seemed to bear a mark, new or fading. The pages crumpled and Quinn realised her grip had turned violent. Her stomach burned and her teeth locked together. She had to force her eyes from it before she shot out the door on all fours, ready to rip apart any sorry sod that came into her path.

She dropped her gaze to the post-it and the tiny scrawl that covered it.

Alpha,

You have no reason to do me a favour, but I beg that you treat this omega gently. I believe you are the only person that can provide the right home for her. And if you can’t, she faces the uncertainty of pack placement and I face imprisonment for forgery. She cannot survive another cruel alpha, and I cannot keep twisting Assembly laws to protect her.

For both of us, please take care of her.

Isaac

The papers wilted in her hands.

It was all a lie. There was never a lack of packs to take Remi, there was a lack of packs that wouldn’t treat her like dirt. Quinn had always assumed Remi hadn’t exactly been put on a pedestal in her previous pack, as was the way for omegas. But she had also hoped her old pack wasn’t the kind that ruled with an iron fist straight to the face. She heard her own breath rattle through her teeth, and realised the papers were shaking between her hands.

There was no time go into shock at her discovery, the most important thing was Remi. Bringing Remi home, and taking care of her, for Quinn’s sanity and Isaac’s freedom. She flicked through the papers, skimming over the bulky text for locations, area codes, any-

-runaway attempt two years prior, but was retrieved by own pack and-

An approximate location was included in a report of Remi disappearing from her previous pack and being brought back after a few weeks spent in a woodland area… Quinn squinted at the map image… she could have sworn that was the forest near the village Jordan lived in.

She texted Jordan the new information and offered to collect her from the park, but she declined, saying she’d rather know she’d fully checked it while Quinn searched the forest. Best to divide and conquer. She told Quinn that she knew the forest, and it wasn’t exactly a family-friendly picnic spot, it was overgrown and protected by some eco laws. A great spot to get lost in, unfortunately.

Quinn thanked her again, promised to pay her back for all the cabs she’d had to take, and hung up. Then she grabbed her car keys and drove like a maniac, straight into Assembly territory.