Wonder Land by Maria Vale

Author:Maria Vale
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Maria Vale

7

In my mind, I did. In my mind, I’ve told you a thousand times.

He handed her the cup.

“Doesn’t help if you’ve never told me,” she said.

“I tried but…” Sten pointed with his chin toward the base of her throat. “I was too late.”

Leonora felt her fingers playing with the leather braid at her neck, the one worn by mated wolves. The braid she’d taken on too young and for all the wrong reasons.

Her mate, Boris, had been brilliant and funny and exhausting and needy. He’d dazzled everyone. Sucked up all the oxygen in the room, before filling the emptiness with words that wolves didn’t use until Leonora was dizzy from it.

He called her beautiful. As though symmetry was more important than strength and sacrifice.

He said he loved her. As though the overused sentiment could substitute for hard work.

He said they would be together forever. As though wolves’ lives weren’t balanced on a knife edge.

Boris had been her—what? Her mentor? That’s what he called himself. He called himself all sorts of things: her mentor, her lover. By the time she realized what he really was—a performer in need of an audience—he called himself her mate. As did everyone else.

Leonora wrapped both hands tightly around the mug to keep her fingers away from her braid.

“He’s been gone for a long time, Sten. You could have said something."

“I know,” Sten said, staring at the shelf, at the things on it, at the hooks where the cups had been. “But you’re not like a shelf.”

“I didn’t think I was,” Leonora said gently. She blew across the surface of the tea and waited for his meaning to become clear as it inevitably would.

“With a shelf, you get the right kind of wood, season it, cut it with the right tools and put it in at the right angle using the right anchors and it will work. I know it will. I don’t know what the right words are or how to cut them to size or what angle to put them at to make them work.”

He poured the tea through the strainer.

“You’re doing all right now.”

“I’ve had eleven years of practice.”

Eleven years. Off and on.

Eleven years. It hadn’t stopped her when he mentioned it before but now it did.

Had it really been that long?

“When did you start helping Tristan?”

He’d set his own tea on his desk and looked at a blueprint.

“Sten?”

“There were two compound fractures. Boris was big. I was bigger. Tristan needed help.”

So of course, Sten helped. Because that was what he did. He fixed what needed fixing. Never said anything to her.

“You didn’t even like him.”

“But you did." He nodded toward her throat, toward her tea-warmed fingers once again fiddling with the leather band. “Still do.”

The pack had no time for morbid sentiment. When Boris did not make it back from his last hunt, the coyotes ate him, like they would eventually eat every wolf who died. Boris's name was put on a stone in the gemyndstow, the memory place and that was it.

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