Page 62 of The Chosen Fae

"I got fifteen and then remembered the other three items."

"I did the same thing, but it was too late to write them down," Stone said. "But that's good."

"Twenty is great."

Stone and Rune were both okay as far as guessing what was correctly in their boxes. Lolita had a whopping twenty-seven.

"Great job," Rune told her, smiling.

"I wish I could have remembered the last three."

Vesper had twenty-five, Xena nineteen, and the others anywhere from seventeen to twenty-five.

Rune had thought she'd done pretty well until she learned that everyone else had beaten her! Stone hugged her. "I still say you did great."

The Game Master said, "Lolita won that challenge. The next challenge is a low-to-the-ground army crawl under a net to reach a stake at the end, and then, as a team, you'll untie complicated knots. Each of you has a knot to untie. Rune and Stone's team has an extra knot to untie. You must wait to untie the knots until all your team members are at the stake."

"We still have an uneven number of players," Vesper said.

"You do. And that person will have to untie their own knot. But the other team will have to untie an extra knot. Everyone, line up in two lines behind the start of the course."

Then they headed over to the net and lined up with Lolita at the last on Vesper's team.

"The team that finishes all their knots first will win the challenge."

Rune was afraid she would mess up their team's challenge. She wasn't as fast a runner as the guys, and she wasn’t sure how fast she could untie knots.

Stone kissed her forehead. "You will do great. And we'll help whoever is having trouble with their knots."

"You may begin," the Game Master said.

Elon headed under the nets, Caspian following him. Rune wanted to go last, but Stone insisted she go ahead of him.

They were all going as fast as they could. Stone kept touching her foot as he was right behind her. She wanted to laugh, but she just dug in even harder and managed to get to the end, where her other teammates pulled her out from under the netting, and Stone quickly followed.

Vesper's team was still waiting for the last two of their team members to finish the net course.

Stone and Rune's team were already working on their knots as fast as they could. Rune just knew she was going to have trouble. They were complicated, but she was doing really well at untying her knot.

She finished hers first! And then began working on the one no one was working on. Stone finished his, then Elon, and then Silas.

Rune finally finished the last one.

Vesper's team was working on their knots. Lolita finished hers first and sat down to watch.

The others worked to finish theirs, Iris first, Xena following her, and Vesper finally got his. Then Caspian got his and finally finished.

"The winner was Rune and Stone's team. The next challenge is leaping over logs and getting over quickest. Lolita will sit this one out so that the teams will be even. Lolita, you can go to the other side of the logs so that your team can join you when they're done."

Everyone lined up, but Stone and Rune shifted into their wolves. Then the others did the same thing. Even though Xena, Iris, and Rune weren't as tall as the guys, they could still do better climbing over the large logs as wolves.

"Go!" the Game Master said.

They all hurried off, and Rune was really having fun with this one. She felt she had all this energy, and she was able to get it out, the adrenaline flowing.

Lolita cheered them on, not saying anyone's name, and Rune figured she was cheering Rune and Stone's team on, not Vesper and Xena's team.

They kept running between logs and jumping over them. The guys could manage with one leap, but the women had to leap onto the logs and then run to the next one.