Alpha Assignment (GL) Chapter 41 (Early Access) (Patreon)

“I need an insane favour and I need you to not ask too many questions.”

Jordan was silent on the other end of the line for a few moments. “Is this…” She dropped her volume. “About the cult?”

“Yes.”

“I’m on my way.”

The call ended and Quinn turned to her newly bloodstained couch. Laid across it was a male werewolf, untitled. Remi was mopping him up with cloths and disinfectant in tiny, careful wipes. Being clean wouldn’t keep him alive, though, they needed professional medical help. And without a pack to provide it, Quinn had panicked and turned to the human health service. Only, she had never had to use it. So she panicked a little more and called her only human friend.

The man had been beaten within an inch of his life, presumably expected to die by his pack.

“What’s your name?” Remi asked him, dabbing around his face wounds with the utmost care.

It took him a few moments to respond, his breaths laboured. “Wes,” he croaked.

“West?” Quinn hissed. “Like the direction?”

“He said ‘Wes,’” Remi corrected. Wes was no longer reacting to either of them.

“And where did you find him?”

Remi hesitated before answering. “Sanctuary.”

“So, you brought home a fugitive on his death bed?”

Over her shoulder, Remi pointed a sour look at Quinn that instantly filled her with guilt. “I couldn’t leave him there.”

“How did you know he would be there?”

Remi turned away again. “I didn’t.”

“Then why did you go?” The question came out sharper, maybe more accusatory, than she’d wanted.

Remi sighed, a weariness overtaking her features. “Because this is common.” She tossed a scarlet cloth back into her water bowl. “I wanted to start visiting Sanctuary… checking for those I might be able to help. I wasn’t expecting to find something so severe on my first trip.”

“Did anyone see you out on the streets?” Quinn pulled back a curtain with her pinky to scan the road, but there were no wanderers.

“No, we didn’t walk out in the open much. Well, except one person who said our costume was super scary.”

Quinn groaned into her fist. Remi ignored the sound and continued fighting the flow of blood. It wasn’t clotting enough to halt. Too many wounds and too deep for his body to begin pulling itself together. Werewolves healed quickly, at least, compared to what Quinn understood about human bodies, so when they got themselves injured enough to die - they died fast.

The doorbell rang and it sent an anxious shudder through her chest, as though she couldn’t quite catch her breath. When she flung it open, Jordan was waiting on the other side, flushed red and blotchy.

“What’s going o-”

Quinn yanked her inside and shut the door.

“Remi found another cult member,” Quinn whispered. “I think an attempted escapee but he has no paperwork and he’s had the shit kicked out of him.”

“Jesus,” Jordan breathed.

“He needs medical treatment before we go to the officials that deal with this, and-” She faltered, a little embarrassed. “I’ve never been to a hospital, I don’t know how it works, I just-”

“It’s okay.” Jordan grabbed her upper arms and squeezed reassurance into them. “I can take him if you can drive.”

Quinn stumbled back a step, sighing with relief. “Thank you.” A crumb of the weight on her chest lifted. “I’m so sorry to drag you into this.”

“I’m glad you called.”

They gave each other momentary, sad smiles.

“Before I take you in, he’s a little out of it so he might say some weird shit.” Or, more concerning, some true shit. “But please do your best to let the people at the hospital know nothing, we’re not allowed to discuss these things-”

“Of course, witness protection and all that.”

Quinn didn’t know what witness protection or ‘all that’ was, but she nodded. As long as Jordan understood to be discreet, she had to trust that it would be okay. She lead them into the living room and heard Jordan gasp softly behind her.

“He looks like he was run over by a truck.”

Remi was tying bandages around his limbs in a desperate effort to keep any of his blood inside of his body.

“Maybe,” Quinn murmured. “He’s not coherent enough to tell us much, and the things he says don’t make much sense.” A lie, but if Wes said something werewolf-related in front of any humans, they needed a pre-asserted excuse.

“I take it he’s got no identification then?”

Quinn shook her head.

“Okay, we might have to pay for his treatment then. Without proof that he’s a citizen, I don’t know if he can get it for free.”

“That’s fine, I’ll give you my credit card. Whatever we can do for him, we will, as long as it doesn’t bring the cult back to us.” It was Remi she gave a look of warning to as she finished that promise.

Jordan approached him, looking as helpless as Quinn felt. “If we just drive him to A&E they’ll ask us how we know him.”

Quinn glanced at the bloodied man. He was watching them discuss him with barely open eyes. “We don’t know him, not really.”

“I found him in the woods,” Remi announced.

“Okay.” Jordan nodded, unable to pry her eyes from the mess that was Wes. “I’ll tell them it was me that found him and called a friend to drive us to hospital.”

“Plan sorted, let’s go.” It all felt too fast and too frail of a plan, but they had no time. If they didn’t move, Quinn would have worse than a bloody werewolf in her house - she’d have a corpse.

Quinn carried Wes, floppy and sodden, while Jordan and Remi unlocked and opened doors. She laid him across the back seat of her car and Jordan squeezed in with him. Remi hopped up front with Quinn.

“If anything,” Quinn said, pulling free of her driveway. “It would be better for him to pretend to be foreign. If he can’t answer questions, he can’t say something that will come back to bite him later.” Possibly literally. “Do you understand, Wes?” She looked back at him. “You can’t say anything at the hospital about where people like us come from, okay?”

Wes made a grunting sound and his eyes closed. Jordan pressed her fingers under his jaw.

“His pulse is weak,” she said, and began rearranging his position. “It’s been a long time since I did my first aid training, I don’t know if my CPR is up to scratch…”

Quinn only understood the filler words in that sentence, so she kept her attention on toeing the speed limit. Her phone showed less than ten minutes left of the journey to the local hospital, and it still felt like too long. What happened if she showed up in the hospital car park with a dead man on her back seat? What would she tell the police? And what would the Assembly do to her for bringing that kind of attention to herself?

Her wheels screeched in protest when they reached the double doors that announced the A&E department in bold, red lettering. She offered to help carry, but Jordan pulled Wes over her shoulder and dragged him out while grunting that they should minimise the amount of people involved. Remi shut the back door after her and hopped back into the front as the pair disappeared through the automatic doors.

The moment they were alone in the car again, Quinn murmured, “You should have warned me,” as she pulled away.

“I’m sorry.” So timid and sweet, but it didn’t fix Quinn’s frustration for once.

“You were texting me back all day saying everything was fine and it wasn’t.” She finally forced herself to look at her little mate tucked into the passenger seat. She appeared sincerely guilty under her fluffy bangs, but that wouldn’t ease Quinn’s paranoia the next time she wanted to go for a ‘visit.’ “I trusted you, Remi.” The words hurt to say aloud. “You’re my mate.”

Remi’s bottom lip wobbled and Quinn couldn’t look at her any longer or she’d crack. She focused on the road and clenched the steering wheel in her fists.

“I’m so sorry, Quinn. I was scared you’d tell me not to bring him home.”

“I would have told you not to move him at all, not in that condition.” Quinn sighed and she hated that out of the corner of her eye she saw Remi jump at the sound. “We could have brought supplies, or driven him to the hospital straight from Sanctuary.” She took the opportunity of a red light to squeeze her eyes shut for a few moments. When she opened them again, she said, “I’m not heartless, I just don’t want the Assembly to have any reason to intrude on my life.”

There was a sniffle, and then a sob, but no reply. Quinn kept her attention on driving. There were too many emotions crammed into the car with them. She didn’t want to say something she didn’t mean, or hear something that might have her hurting more than she already was.

“When we’re in our human-like form…” Quinn murmured to herself. “We are… biologically the same, right?” Bigger, stronger, but the same.

Remi made an uncertain noise.

“There isn’t a way they could ever tell - a test or something?”

“I don’t know, Quinn,” Remi sobbed, her voice cracking.

Neither spoke another word for the rest of the drive home.