Alpha Assignment (GL) Chapter 23 (Early Access) (Patreon)

“It’s time to go wide, friends!” Carla announced to the paint-stained room. “This week we’re starting on landscapes.”

The group offered a chorus of, “Oohs.” Remi’s was super quiet and muffled by Quinn’s elbow.

“You’re welcome to pull up a reference pic on your phones, but I find the most nostalgic… romantic-” Carla dipped herself over a table with a hand to her forehead. “-scenes are those we draw from our memories.” She clapped her hands and jumped into the lesson, explaining how to build up a landscape, colour layering, and a special brush technique for fluffy clouds.

With half the lesson dedicated to instruction, it was now time for the practical experience. Staring at her canvas, Quinn allowed an old view to unfold in her mind. It wasn't a place she let herself think of often, but she'd had an idea while Carla was scrunching her paint brush into creamy swirls. That it might be therapeutic to reminisce within the boundary of the classroom. She didn't have to think about it when she left the leisure centre, back to her quiet life with Remi, and the painting could always be thrown away afterwards. She drew up her best memory of her father's pack lands, how it looked when she was a child.

The grass was dry and patchy, wild flowers won out everywhere they decided to invade, and Quinn could remember every dip and hill from running them on all fours from the moment she could put one paw in front of the other. It almost disappointed her how well she could remember it.

It wasn't till Carla clapped to signal the clean-up time that Quinn's focus broke, and she realised she and Remi had worked side-by-side in silence for the entirety of the class. She felt a heaviness on her, and a desperation to get to bed. It wasn't the uplifting sensation she'd expected from her experiment with the past. She packed her painting away with Remi's, neither looking like more than blocks of green and blue yet, and they headed home.

Quinn slept deep and well and dreamless. The next day, a much-needed work-from-home Wednesday, Remi's purchases began arriving.

The doorbell rang while Quinn was nursing an extra strong coffee, staring at the numbers on her laptop screen as though eventually they would rearrange themselves into charts and diagrams. Remi hurtled to her from the living room, eyes wide and face white.

"It's probably the postman," Quinn assured her, with the most soothing tone she could muster while not having had the chance to drain her mug. "His name is Paul and he delivers letters and parcels."

Remi nodded, eyes unconvinced, and attached herself to Quinn's side as she went to answer the bell. Postie Paul hadn't had to ring in quite some time, usually he popped her letters in the built-in wall box beside her front door and Quinn hadn't ordered anything for a while.

When she pulled the door open, it wasn't Paul on the doorstep but a courier. He handed her a large cardboard box and held out a tablet for her to sign.

"Hello, Paul," Remi whispered.

"This isn't Paul the postman," Quinn said with an awkward smile to the courier. "I got it wrong, sorry, Remi."

"You're close, though!" The man's face lit up with a grin and he seemed to grow in size. "It's Pete."

"Nice to meet you, Pete." Quinn handed back the tablet and Remi repeated her words only much softer.

"Have a nice day, ladies."

"You too, Pete. Stay warm out there." October had arrived and brought with it an intense cold that could rattle even Quinn’s teeth in human form. Her furry side would have no issues, but her neighbours would if they saw an enormous beast running around the garden.

Pete the courier gave her a salute on his way back to his van, and Quinn shut the door.

Remi fell back onto the stairs like a dried-up starfish. "That was so embarrassing I think I'm going to die,” she gasped.

"That was totally my fault, Remi. But look at this way - you spoke to a human! Directly!"

"And I'm never doing that again."

"Why not? He left happier than when he arrived, so you must have done something right."

"Are you sure he wasn't laughing at me?"

"One-hundred-percent." Quinn offered a hand to pull her back up to her feet, shifting the package to her hip. Remi accepted. "Now, let's not let one awkward social interaction get in the way of the best part of online shopping - the unboxing!" She plopped the box in the centre of the living room and left in search of scissors.

When she returned, Remi had already ripped one side off and was gutting the insides for her new treasures. Quinn hid the scissors behind her back until she could slip them back in a drawer and watched the delight on Remi's face grow and grow. Why did she pay for a TV licence with this viewing pleasure available to her? Remi’s eyes sparkled.

Once every prize had been retrieved and laid out on the carpet with equal space between them, Remi began to pile them in preparation of her own delivery to her bedroom. Once the pile was at Remi's waist-height, Quinn stepped in to offer her own services. Remi lead them upstairs, giving Quinn helpful directions and notices of when she was getting too close to the wall or railing. Quinn's face was buried in a pine green throw blanket. She left the pile on Remi's bed and left her to organise her things how she wished. Quinn had a job to get back to.

A few hours later, she popped her head in the door to suggest lunch, and was silenced by the change that had overtaken the space. Browns and greens were smudged about the room over the white canvas and it was so... cozy. Remi was arranging and rearranging her bedding with her new cushions and blankets. There was an air to the behaviour that reminded Quinn of nesting... and it warmed her more than the new colour tones of the room.

She blinked, forcibly rinsed her brain of the stupid alpha thought, and called inside, "Are you hungry? I was thinking bagels for lunch."

Remi twisted to beam over her shoulder. "Yes, please! I'm almost finished."

"No problem. Take your time, it looks great."

It wasn't possible for Remi's grin to get brighter, but it did, and she returned to her fussing and folding. While Quinn got lunch started, another courier arrived with more bedroom bits. She brought the box up to Remi with a plate balanced atop: cream cheese and smoked salmon bagel cut into quarters.

The last parcel of the day was the extra item that Quinn had purchased: a simple mobile phone. It didn't have much capacity beyond calls and texts, but it was built to survive just about anything. Quinn put her details into it: mobile number, home number, address, email. Any way that Remi could possibly need to contact her, or the emergency services might.

She started up the stairs to give Remi a quick training on her new device, but paused as a stomach-turning thought occurred. What if something happened to Quinn? Who did Remi go to for help then?

She added Jordan as a contact under: EMERGENCY FRIEND. And retrieved Isaac's details off the top page of Remi's file, she saved him as: MISTER ISAAC. Slightly more at ease with a back-up plan in place, Quinn jogged head-first into the trials and tribulations of convincing Remi to keep a human-made technological device on her person, all the time, forever.

And charge it.