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Elias
As we waited to see what would happen with the gold leaf, I tried to stay calm – even though I felt anything but calm. The truth was that I felt stressed out on every level.
I was worried about Jax and about Camryn. I was worried that the gold leaf really wasn’t what we were supposed to be looking for, even though Camryn had a point. Why else would there have been a random 24-carat gold leaf in the woods? That had to have meant something, didn’t it?
And then I was stressed out about Blair. Ever since I had snapped at her for being a smartass in the woods, she hadn’t said more than two words to me. And those words had been “okay” and “fine.”
I hadn’t meant to snap at her. I just didn’t do well under stressful situations. And this was one of them. There was a very real chance that my brother wouldn’t survive this. And even though it wasn’t something I had ever realized before now, my brother was my best friend. He always had my back. Losing him would destroy me in a way that I couldn’t even begin to imagine.
So, anyway, like I was saying, I really hadn’t meant to snap at her. But I had. And as we stood on completely separate ends of the circle we’d formed around the wooden platform, Blair wouldn’t even look at me. I kept trying to catch her gaze, but her eyes stayed focused on the platform and away from me.
It was strange, to be honest. It was the first time Blair Roberts hadn’t been glancing over at me every few seconds since the first time we’d met. And now really wasn’t the time I wanted her to shut me out, even though I knew that it was mostly my fault. I never should have snapped at her.
There was something else that had been weighing heavy on my mind, too – and that was how to tell her the truth about how I really felt.
I mean, there was no doubt that we were going to need to have the conversation at some point. We were mates now. There was no sense in hiding the way I felt about it.
It was just that Blair was so... precious. She was like a beautiful gemstone, a diamond in the rough. When I told her that I was falling in love with her, I wanted it to be at the right time. I wanted it to be perfect – or as close to perfect as you could get. I wasn’t a fool. I’d been around for hundreds of years. I knew that things were never really perfect, no matter how perfect they may have seemed.
“Where did Mila and Alexander go?” Lynda questioned.
I glanced around, realizing for the first time that my sister and Alexander were both gone. I couldn’t help but feel slightly irritated about that. We were about to find out if our brother was about to live or die and she had gone off... where? To the woods with Alexander?
What was even going on between the two of them, anyway? We hadn’t interacted a lot with one another today, but I couldn’t help but notice that they seemed to be getting closer during the few times that we had crossed paths.
Just last night, I had been so convinced that Alexander’s flirting attempts weren’t working on Mila, but suddenly I wasn’t so sure. I had never seen Mila get this close to any guy who she’d ever met before. She just seemed like... herself. Even with Drake, she had always kept a big part of herself hidden. But with Alexander, she just seemed comfortable.
I only hoped that she wouldn’t grow too comfortable. The last thing I wanted was for her to end up with someone who had as much baggage as Alexander did.
I knew that, at some point, I was going to need to have a talk with Mila about Alexander’s past. Now wasn’t the time or place, of course. I needed to wait until tomorrow morning, before we began the next challenge. Assuming that we made it through this one.
I knew Mila was a big girl. She could take care of herself and, ultimately, she could make her own decisions. But she also needed to know exactly what she would be getting into if she fell for him. If it wasn’t already too late.