Silas’s P.O.V
Anika's anger radiated like a wildfire from the passenger’s seat as we made our way back to the packhouse. Her eyes blazed with fury, and her words cut through the air like sharp daggers.
"I can't believe you, Silas! You reckless fool! You've ruined everything!" she hissed, her voice seething with frustration. “An Alpha challenge?”
The tension inside the car was palpable, mirroring the turbulent emotions raging between Anika and me. My knuckles turned white on the steering wheel and I tried to keep my focus on the road so that I didn’t make a mistake and end up steering us off track, but it was getting increasingly difficult with each passing moment.
The evening outside seemed deceptively calm, with the sun setting in a brilliant display of oranges and purples, but inside the confined space of the car, the atmosphere crackled with our heated argument.
“Anika, it was between two Alphas!” I tried to defend myself, to explain the situation to her. “I couldn't let Ezra's words go unchallenged! He literally provoked me into a challenge himself! How could you expect me to stay calm?”
But Anika wasn't having any of it. "You should have just stayed quiet then! We were supposed to wait for the perfect chance to attack them, to catch them off guard, and you blew it!" She continued to berate me, her words stinging like a swarm of angry bees. “How do we get to them now?”
Her frustration was understandable; we had planned this attack for months, hoping to catch Ezra's pack off guard and weaken their defenses. Since my old pack was too trained and controlled to be easily defeated in a head on attack, a sneak attack was the only way we would ever win against them and with lesser casualties.
Even though I was trying to win this battle, that didn’t mean I no longer cared for my old pack. They were still dear to me, every single member, even if they no longer saw me as one of their own.
But my emotions had gotten the better of me, and I couldn't stand by silently while Ezra insulted me by claiming Zoya as his mate.
Anika's dark eyes bored into mine, demanding an explanation. "Why did you have to provoke him like that? Now they'll be prepared for our attack, and we'll lose the element of surprise!"
I knew she was right, and a wave of regret washed over me. But I couldn't ignore the burning anger and pain inside me, not when it concerned Zoya. "He insulted me first. He claimed Zoya," I muttered, my voice tinged with frustration. "I couldn't let him get away with it."
“The woman who gave you shelter?” Anika scoffed, shaking her head in disbelief. "You let your emotions cloud your judgment, Silas. This is exactly why you lost your pack in the first place! You need to learn when to make the right decisions and when to control your temper!"
Her words struck a nerve. The anger bubbling inside me threatened to spill over, and I shot back at her, questioning her belief in my abilities.
"Do you no longer believe in me, Anika?" I snapped, frustration evident in my voice. "Do you no longer think I'm capable of taking down Ezra and his pack?"
"It doesn't fucking matter whether I believe in you or not, Silas!" Anika's response was cutting, and her lack of faith in my leadership stung.
"We're not ready yet," she continued, her tone firm. "Your old pack is skilled and has years of training and experience! We need more time to properly train our soldiers, to strategize, to be sure of our victory. If we go into battle now, the only thing that is bound to happen is our failure. "
Her words rang in my ears, and I couldn't help but feel a twinge of doubt. But my emotions were clouding my judgment, and I couldn't bear the thought of waiting any longer. Lily's death haunted me, and I wanted justice.
“The best strategy would have been to wait for them to go to sleep, and attack in the dead of the night, catching them all unaware!” Anika ranted on. “We’d been observing them for weeks! Recording their patrol timing and making sure that we got the exact number of wolves guarding the south borders downhill! And we even succeed! We were so close to getting what we wanted! So bloody close!”
She took deep, heavy breaths, trying to control her temper. Her words still reverberated inside my mind, like a constant reminder of the failure that I myself had set in motion.
My knuckles were as white as the snow on the steering wheel and I was trying my best to keep my wolf from rising to the forefront of my mind.
Anika’s constant rambling wasn’t helping either. In fact, it only made me want to rip her to shreds as well, which wasn’t even an option. So I pushed down the urges of my wolf with teeth gritting force, keeping myself in check with iron control that Anika probably had no idea about.
“So…what now?” I asked through clenched teeth, even though I didn’t want to. I wanted this to be my own judgment, but we all saw where that led us.
“Now, we wait.” She told me, her voice comparatively calmer.
"We can't wait," I retorted, my jaw clenched. "Ezra needs to pay for what he did. We can't let him roam free with Zoya while Lily's blood stains our hands."
"See, that's the problem with you. You're extremely emotionally volatile and don't know when to make the right decision," Anika stressed, frustrated, throwing her hands in the air. "That’s why you ran at the sight of Ezra’s dead mate, didn’t you? It made you a suspect in the eyes of your entire pack! And now, once again, your emotions have landed you and the rest of us in trouble as you accepted a challenge from Ezra out of anger."