Tuesday morning, we arrive at school in Eberlyn’s stepbrother’s car in silence. The soon to be Alpha once he finds his mate and my sworn enemy. It’s a wonder how she managed to smuggle me into his car willingly.

And, oh boy was there tension. . It was almost stifling.

I wasn’t so sure if it was the air between me and Riley or the suspicious yet worried glances Eberlyn gave but I refused to pay them any attention as I kept my eyes firmly glued to the window in my seat.

I shift around, trying to find a non-arguemental way to brain the subject and trying to find a more comfortable sitting position, and made the mistake of touching Riley’s thighs with mine as she sat with me in the back seat.

As she begins to turn her head, I flinch, fearing for the worst, an automatic body and slide my eyes down onto my lap to avoid it.

Or so she can’t ask me questions I won’t have the answers to?

“Sorry.” I all but quietly squeak out, giving her no time to say anything first.

She says nothing fat first but I can still feel her eyes burning into the side of my head as if that response is enough. I squirm around more carefully this time so I don’t make the same mistake twice in a subtly way of moving away from her.

It feels like I'm on a battleground. It feels like I'm sitting next to a stranger I’ve known all my life.

I don’t like the feeling.

What even was this? We’re acting as if we're strangers but we’re best friends.

We’re more than best friends at this point.

And family always solves its problems with communication.

I swallow and dare to raise my eyes in her direction. “Um-I-About yesterday-” I start bravely, even as my uneasy voice betrays my little confidence, shying a glance at her. But im not allowed to go any further with my words as she cuts in.

“I don’t wanna talk about it. Drop it,” her words finely cutting through my sentence like a butcher’s knife cutting through fresh liver. And although her voice is low, I can hear the quiet rising anger in her tone, her sudden response short and clipped in nature.

The refusal to talk about the issue of the elephant in the car is so swift that it almost hurts much more than the burning sting of her tone like the sharp jagged edge of a knife.

There’s also a warning sign, an alarm that screeches at me to turn back, to not continue with my dangerous intention, to shut up to keep the peace, even as delicate as it is, in her voice that almost makes me rethink my decision to continue with my goal. But I persist on as if nothing happened.

“If we don’t talk about it-.” Again she cuts me off. My nostrils flare as I breathe in heavily through my nose, my fingers aching to meet skin in harsh contact as my fingers twitched.

If there’s anything I hate more than anything, it’s being rudely interrupted while im speaking.

I remind myself that she is just as uncomfortable as I am and her emotions are just getting the best of her as I breathe in slowly, reigning in my anger as I try to calm down.

Tensions are already high anyway. Won’t do much good if I add more fire to the flickering flame.

I raise my eyes to hers, knowing that they’re already, and sure enough, her eyes met with mine.

“I. Said. Drop. It.” She clenched her teeth suddenly, her eyes glaring at me.

Subdued into silence, I meekly lower my gaze down onto my lap again. “Okay,” I whisper, my voice barely infiltrating my eardrums as they escaped my lips.

Eberlyn throws me a worried glance through the mirror, her eyes holding a sympathetic aura to them.

Silence reigns in the car once more as I fall silent. We arrive at school soon after which Riley interprets as her cue to leave.

She jumps out of the car once it murmurs to a stop, slams the door in a hissy fit and stomps off without a word to either of us.

Releasing a small tired sigh, I let my head fall back into my open hands as exhaustion and exasperation flood through my body, drowning the rest of my senses and emotions out.

We’ve only just arrived at school at a fashionably early hour that made me feel sluggish even though the sun was brightly peeking out from behind the slowly moving clouds, its golden rays glaring down at our bodies, making it hotter than it needed to be. I scowl.

And Riley chose to cause me more grief than I already had this morning when I only wanted to sort out the problem because I couldn’t bear with the silent treatment any longer. But alas, good intentions can only reach so far before they backfire.

And the day hasn’t properly started yet. It’s still too early and our teachers aren’t even in school.

And too early for Riley's stubbornness.

I groan. I run my hands up and down my face, trying to scrub away the sudden tiredness and the heavily weighted stress that equally dragged my body down that rotated around this morning’s events were like a bad dream that I didn’t need to be relived.

Eberlyn’s voice filters through my ears, jarringly loud as it pierces into my quiet jumbled mind as it single-handedly scrambling my thought up into a bubbling goop of scattered thoughts.

“She’ll come around. I know she will.”

Hopefulness drips from her tone like syrup onto a pile of fresh pancakes, sweet but not tantalizing enough to my ears to convince me that they were true words. Saying that she would come around, a possibility that I didn’t think would ever come to fruition, was like saying pigs could fly or better yet, that dolphins could walk on two feet.

A bitter exasperated hopeless laugh escaped out my throat before I could stop it. “When? Next week? Next month? Next year?” I accuse, knowing full well neither of these is going to happen, with a raised eyebrow as I fold my arms across my chest.

If there was any person out of the three of us and I put together who was the most stubborn, it was Riley. That girl could give Zoz a run for his money.

I sneak a peek at her through the open spaces in between my hands and catch sight of the crumpled expression on her brown face. “Sorry,” I say quickly guilt swimming through my thoughts, delighted as it violated my thoughts, and making them more scrambled than ever.

She lets out a soft sigh of resignation before she sends a brightly little sombre smile my way, which, im not gonna lie, was quite infectious. As infectious as it was though, my lips sit silently on my face.

Even when she was being serious, she still manages to smile. An admirable quality.

“It's fine. I just don’t like seeing you so hopeless and frustrated like that.” She says with an honest tired smile on her lips.

I consider reaching a hand out towards her to comfort her, to let her know she wasn’t going to be admonished for attempts to reduce my stress and frustration with the situation, as unhelpful as they were, and that they were not going to go overlooked. I don’t want one if my best friends who’s practically a sister to me to ever feel like that, like she’s alone.

Because I know what that feels like. Sometimes I still feel that way, but nkt as bad as it used to be because of him.

But then I stop myself, hands already midway through reaching for her in the air.

What if she didn’t want support that way? What if she shook me off? Am I overthinking this?

I shook my head, my hair whacking me in the face in silent punishment.

Don’t be stupid, she’s not going to, she’s one of your best friends, I gently chastised myself in my head for thinking such vile distrusting thoughts about my dear friend.

But still, I couldn’t bring myself to reach across to her in silent support.

My mind wandered over to happier, less harmful thoughts.

Letting myself briefly, very briefly, forget how stubborn Riley was, I allowed myself a teensy weensy bit of hope to flicker and bloom within my chest. People can often change after all. Who’s to say Riley couldn’t?

I look out towards the direction in which she left in, my gaze drifting right past the car door which eventually lands on the unopened gates of the high school. My eyes slid further down past it and descended upon the looming building up ahead.

But I couldn’t still believe that, couldn’t even fathom the thought, ironic seeing as how I entertained it.

“If we do give her more time and levity, how soon do you think she'll come back?” I pose to Eberlyn, gaze still fixed in the building that called itself a school for teenagers.

Silence.

“I don’t- I don’t know.” Comes the quiet response from the front seat. I expected her to answer my question with that but I didn’t expect how much the response would tug at my heartstrings like a puppet in a show and tell.

I slid my eyes back to her, momentarily caught in between two places before I zipped back into one.

“I know it’s not going to happen seeing as how stubborn she is and how obtuse I am, but if I apologize for all those mean words I said yesterday what with calling her selfish and all, do you think she'd forgive me and come back to is sooner than later?” I ask, hope laced around my words like cyanide, folding my arms around my middle as I suddenly felt cold but it did nothing to abate what I felt on the inside.

I rub at my arms, chills spreading throughout my body, and look at Eberlyn beseechingly, pleading with her silently to lie to me this one time. But uncertain silence answers me instead.

Wetness dripped past my eyelids and landed splat onto my cheek.

But I knew deep down past the stupid light of rapidly dying hope, past the desperate wish to be in her good books again, past the helpless need for her to forgive me and forget what I said to her on Monday so we could continue being a happy group of best friends, that that wasn’t going to happen. At least, not anytime soon.

Once it hit me, the pain rattled off towards my heart and wrapped its slender weighty body around it and squeezed. The force of it almost knocks me over but I stay seated though barely managing to not start crying. I silently wheeze out as I lay bent over clutching my lower abdomen as the hurt spread.

I pressed a hand to my mouth to muffle any sounds that may come out.

But despite my best efforts, tears now sped down my cheeks.

She reached out a hand lightly placed it on top of mine. I dropped my eyes down to it. “If it’s any consolation, she has had some people betray her before but im sure her outburst won’t last long.” She says but the sentiment of her words are, as beautifully crafted as they appear, lost on me as their raw syllables hit my ears like bullets.

I quickly snatch my hand out of her grasp, hot fury building up in my stomach, my chest burning up with rage. “I would never betray her, friend or not.” I hiss out, my eyes narrowed into snake-like slits.

Never, my heart longingly whispers.

She splutters, almost choking on her spit. “I didn’t- I never-that’s not what I meant!” She finally lets out, eyes magnifying in her oval-shaped face which was frozen in horror that grasped at my heart and squeezed painfully to the point of heavy breathy rasps.

Guilt tore at me, swimming up into my throat, making me fidget uncomfortably in my seat. I made a noise at the back of my throat and opened my mouth, getting ready to apologize to her for the unfathomable time lapse in the last 24 hours.

But then something flickered in her eyes, gone before I could make out what emotion it was and what it meant for me, flashing at me like a red warning strengthened my weakening resolve.

I fold my arms across my chest as I levelled my eyes with hers. “While we’re on the topic of betrayal, why don’t we talk about how you betrayed me yesterday. Would you care to enlighten me why you chose her over me?”

Her eyes dim, dark anger swirling within those depths as her jaw sets. “Don’t.”

I laugh and fold my arms across my chest. “Or what, you’ll run back to Riley and choose her over me right? Even though you knew I was in the right? Even though you trust me more than her?” The words pour out of me like acid, each one more harmful than the next as it spews out my mouth in an endless stream.

I didn’t want to say there words nor did I like the way they poured out of me like serene calm water. I really didn’t. But the hurt inside me still ran deep, squirming and pulsing like it’s own entity that screamed at me to hurt her and I wasn’t so sure I wanted to let go of that yet.

She turns her head away from me in a quick fluid moment but not before I catch sight of the anger, the volcanic animosity that shimmered in her eyes which were usually a calm loving brown but now turned into a dark brown almost liquifying into black, and grips the wheel.

“I didn’t want to pick sides. I didn’t want to divide us any more than we were already were or make any more problems between us. Is that so wrong?” she grits out, hands gripping the steering wheel tightly with her shoulders pulled up into a locked hunch.

I stare at her with furious anger, shaking and trembling as it surged through me like strong waves pushing against the shore, so much I thought my arms were going to fall off from the intensity, feeling my temperature rise along with my shallow erratic breathing. The heat of it feels like burning from the inside out.

“So you chose to divide me and you instead? After everything we've been through?” I spit at her in hard, roughly edged syllables as they glace past my lips, the hit range and cold hurt fueling me on.

I saw her jaw clench and her grip on the steering wheel tighten even as they began to tremble.

From what though, I don’t know. From hurt? From anger? From guilt? I didn’t know and I wasn’t so sure I wanted to.

Cause I didn’t care if I hurt her. I wanted to hurt her as much as she hurt me. I wanted her to feel the same betrayal I felt.

Fern tries to reach out to me, to soothe the raging waters clawing at me, rising to the surface front and centre, but I hiss at her. She shrinks back into herself with a low yelp. I narrow my eyes.

I don’t have the time nor the patience to worry myself about hurting her feelings right now, much as it hurts seeing her and knowing I'm the one that hurt her that way. Couldn’t she see that I too was hurting?