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Elias
I wasn’t going to lie. I was starting to get nervous. That was saying something, since it took a lot to make me nervous.
I just couldn’t help but feel like this was a losing battle. Nighttime was almost upon us. The sun was beginning to slowly make its descent into the evening sky. And we had yet to turn up anything that even remotely fit the description of the thing that was described in the riddle.
How were we going to win this game if we couldn’t even get through the first day?
There were probably about four more hours to find what we needed to find in order to save Jax. If we didn’t complete the challenge today, we wouldn’t get a do-over tomorrow. It was now or never.
Even though that probably should have motivated me, it actually seemed to be having the reverse effect on me. I just wasn’t sure how we could find it when we had looked everywhere. I got the feeling that if we were going to find anything, we would have found it by now. What was the point in even continuing to look?
It made me wonder if Demetrius was right – if this entire thing had been nothing more than a lie.
As I sat down on a rock to take a break, Blair glanced over at me. “What do you think you’re doing?” she asked.
“I’m taking a break.”
“A break?” She narrowed her eyes at me. “There is no time for any of us to take breaks right now. We need to keep moving.”
“I’m just not sure if there’s even a point in looking anymore,” I admitted quietly.
She took a few steps closer to me and said in an accusing tone, “So, what you’re saying then isn’t that you’re taking a break. What you’re really doing is giving up.”
I glanced down at the ground, unwilling to admit that it was true. My mind just wasn’t with it anymore. I was Elias Sherwood. I had never been a quitter, but right now, the only thing I felt like doing was quitting...
“You are giving up.” Blair continued to stare at me. “You can’t give up, Elias. You can’t quit. This is Jax we’re talking about. Your brother.”
“My brother, who’s a lost cause right now,” I muttered under my breath.
“You need to snap yourself right out of that mindset. We need to keep looking. We need to do this for Jax... and for Camryn,” she pointed out.
I didn’t say anything for a few long moments and then she began again. “I want you to ask yourself a question. Do you think if the roles were reversed, Jax would give up on you?”
I thought about it for a moment. My mind replayed all of the times Jax had ever saved my life over the course of my lifetime. I wouldn’t have been here right now if it weren’t for my little brother.
I glanced up at Blair, making eye contact with her for the first time since I’d sat down. “No. Jax wouldn’t give up. He would keep fighting. He wouldn’t stop until he found me... or until it was too late.”
“Then you owe him the same fight he would have given you.” She knelt down in front of me. “Please get up, Elias. I can’t lose my best friend any more than you can lose your brother. We need to fight for both of them.”
I didn’t say anything in response.
After a long moment, Blair rose to her feet and reached for my hand. “Please, Elias?”
I glanced up into her face then. Just one look into her beautiful green eyes was all it took to convince me. I was pretty sure that she could have convinced me to do anything. There wasn’t a damn thing that I wouldn’t have done for that girl, no matter how defeated I might have felt.
I took her hand. “I won’t give up. For Jax’s sake, Camryn’s sake, or your sake.”
“Good,” Blair replied with a smile.
Man, she really needed to stop smiling like that. Her smile was so damn cute. It just made me want to rip her clothes off, and while we may have been mates, we just weren’t at that point yet.