Feed Them Silence by Lee Mandelo

Author:Lee Mandelo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tor Publishing Group

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The grinding, mechanical whir of the garage door echoed Sean’s stabbing headache. Though she was a couple hours late back from the lab—she couldn’t bring herself, especially after the morning’s session, to waste a single moment with her wolf—Riya’s car wasn’t home either. Sean double-checked her phone, but she had no messages from her wife. She frowned reflexively, heading inside to Miller’s eager baying barks and ruffling his ears as her gaze swept the kitchen. No dinner left warming in the oven, no explanatory note on the counter. The paper meal-plan posted on the fridge hadn’t been updated since last week, before their blowout fight. Turnabout was fair play, Sean reminded herself, but remained unsettled by Riya’s marked absence. Her final interface session, spent with her cold, hungry pack, had eaten the scraps of her emotional bandwidth.

Riya’s hoard of healthy-ish snacks from the wholesale store—trail mix, rice crackers, organic gummy bears—sang a siren song. She’d skipped her lunch and nibbled pretzels for dinner. Finding her own appetite, after being washed with her wolf’s desperation each time she synced up to the neural feed, was easier said than done; ensconced in her cozy office chair with central heating and access to one hundred forms of carryout, the guilt made her sick. Four years of memories of lost siblings, dead to starvation or frostbite or accidents. Her girl Kate carried a world of hurt in that achingly tender brain. Gummy bears in hand, Sean retired to the couch and turned on the television to fill the space with sound. She pretended that if her wife had come home, she would confess her growing sense of conflict—her regrets for the suffering unfolding in front of her eyes—then nursed a petty, miserable satisfaction that she’d been denied the opportunity.

Aimless scrolling through her contacts showed her the names of colleagues, none close enough to chat with, and her team—far too close. Miller hopped onto the couch, burrowing his snout between her relaxed bent elbow and the cushions. His huffing breath tickled her side, so she reclined to give him room to resettle on top of her, one of her legs propped on the couch and the other splayed off. A scratch behind his ears made his eyes droop.

“We’re all you have, huh,” Sean muttered.

At twice the age of the male pack leader, Miller had grown to be a distinguished old gentleman, cooped up in a vast human house all day with vacuum robots for company. Neither Sean nor Riya spent enough time with him, not for a herding dog whose energies still ran quick and high. For a moment, she pictured adopting him a pup of his own, but came to a screeching halt when she remembered she was probably a few months away from an empty house and a wife living overseas. No puppies on the horizon, not for her or Miller. If she brought one home now, Riya would accuse her of using the new dog as a bribe. On that grim note, she fired off a quick what’s up? text to Riya.

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