Craved by an Alpha (3 page)

He growled again, unable to contain it as he pictured her bound and afraid. His claws grew, emerging as he thought about hunting down whoever had hurt her and tearing into them. He wanted their blood on his hands. The scent of Eloise’s fear grew stronger and he pulled down a deep breath to steady himself, not wanting to frighten her with his anger.

Cavanaugh looked her over again, self-reproach burning through him as her voice ran around his head, taunting him.

Two years.

Her journey would have been a difficult one, and not only because she had never left their homeland and had no experience of the world. Her position in the pride meant she had very little money, only a small allowance that he knew she had been saving her entire life. It wouldn’t have been enough to cover luxuries like flights and hotels or even restaurants.

Her tattered clothing, her fatigue and how much weight she had lost since the last time he had seen her all confirmed his worst fears. She had spent two years living rough, sleeping on the streets or in hostels and travelling by foot, by hitchhiking or by jumping trains.

The thought of his little female living in such a fashion, day-to-day, probably stealing food and fearing for her safety, cut him right down to his soul and had his heart burning with a need to gather her into his arms and somehow take away every terrible experience she must have had.

It was his fault.

He had ventured far from the mountains and the pride village. If he hadn’t left Bhutan, she could have easily found him. She wouldn’t have been forced to spend years travelling and tracking him down.

If he had gone back for her—no, he couldn’t think like that. He had warred with himself at the time about it and it had played on his mind ever since.

It had been too dangerous.

He had fought Stellan countless times and had always driven the male back into submission.

Except the last time.

That time he had allowed the male to defeat him.

It had only taken a passing thought during their fight, a split-second in which Cavanaugh had realised that he could be free of his position as alpha and could change the course of his life for the better, towards how he wanted it to be, by using the five year rule if he lost the fight but survived.

In that moment, Stellan had dealt what would have been a killing blow if the male hadn’t slipped on the icy ground. The pain had been so intense that it had blinded Cavanaugh, forcing him to shift back from his snow leopard form. When he had seen all the blood on him and the deep wounds on his chest, he had feared he wouldn’t survive to claim Eloise and the future he wanted with her.

His snow leopard side had still been partially in control, muddled in with his human mind because of the pain, and it had responded to that deep need. It had seized control and forced him to flee the village and venture high into the mountains to lick his wounds.

Days had passed before his deeper animal instincts had receded and he had realised with dismay what he had done.

He hadn’t intended to lose the fight. He hadn’t intended to leave Eloise behind. But both of those things had happened and there had been nothing he could do to change them.

Stellan had locked down the village and would have killed him if he had tried to return for Eloise.

Cavanaugh had waited almost a week to see whether she might leave, straying far enough from the village boundaries for him to reach her. She hadn’t and he had been growing weaker, the cold slowing his healing and stealing his strength. He had been forced to head down the mountain.

Once there, he had come to the hard decision to leave Bhutan and wait for the five years to pass so he could give Eloise the life that she deserved.

To give her that life, he needed to be free of his position.

So he had convinced himself that she was better off at the pride, safe there until the five years were up and he could return to her and try to win her heart.

But the pain in her haunted eyes said that he had been wrong. He had left her at the pride and she had paid for it in ways she didn’t want to speak about, ones that had broken her spirit. His instincts as her fated male and his heart pressed him to make her tell him what had happened to her. He needed to know.

“Eloise…” He wasn’t sure what he could say to make everything better. There was nothing he could say. She had braved the world, and every danger imaginable, in order to find him. Whatever had happened at the pride, it had been bad to drive her to leave and seek him out. He looked at her wrists again and couldn’t stop himself from pressing her, because he suddenly felt sure those scars hadn’t happened during her journey and it left him sick to his stomach. “What happened?”

“It doesn’t matter. Please. You must return to the pride.”

It damn well did matter. He could order her to tell him, but he didn’t want things to be that way between them. She wasn’t beneath him. She was above him, deserved to be worshipped by him as her fated male.

“Please come back. The pride needs you.”

He didn’t like the restrained way she argued with him. There was a time when she would have playfully hit him and given him a piece of her mind. Maybe she would in eight days.

In eight days, things could begin to return to how he had liked them and he could forget the last five years, and the five that had come before them.

Could he convince her to wait? Could he delay her long enough for those days to pass? Gods, he wished that he could, even when the steely edge to her gaze said that he couldn’t.

She had a reason for hunting him down and asking him to come back, and the piece of his heart that still cared about his pride said to listen to it, even when the rest warned it would end in misery for him. He would be throwing away the five years he had spent living with his regrets, looking forward to the day he could finally correct all his mistakes and make something good come out of them.

What if he told her that she was his fated female?

As soon as he thought that, he shoved it away. He couldn’t. Not yet. At this point, it would only hurt her, just as it would have hurt her if he had told her after he had assumed the role of alpha all those years ago. They couldn’t be together as mates yet and that meant he had to wait. Once he was free of his position, he would break the news to her somehow.

But for that to happen, he needed to stay away from the village until the five years were up.

“Stay a while and we’ll talk about everything. You need to rest and eat. You’re worn out and I can see it,” he said and he swore her eyes had flashed fire at him.

She was on to him. She knew he was out to stall her.

Her eyes darkened.

“We don’t have time. The pride doesn’t have time. I have to take you back to the village now,” she said, her voice gaining confidence and fire at last. “I have to go back.”

It seemed she had been counting the days since he had left just as he had.

“Why?” He frowned at the resolve that burned in her words. This was important to her, perhaps more so than he had thought, and he began to get the sinking feeling that something had gone terribly wrong back at the pride, something he wouldn’t be able to ignore, not even for eight days. “Eloise… if you really want me to go back, you need to tell me why you left.”

“I did it because I knew I could find you… because I had hoped that I could convince you to do the right thing,” she snapped and glared at him, anger lacing her scent, frustration and disappointment that he could feel in her. “Your kin are living in a dictatorship… Stellan is a tyrant… many of us have been killed and the rest of us…”

Her voice faded and she wrapped her arms around herself, lowered her head and clutched the sleeves of her grey coat, bunching the material into her trembling fists.

“I am sorry. I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that,” she whispered.

He wasn’t sorry. She had given him hope that the woman he had known a decade ago still existed inside her and that he could have that woman back in his life. Everything could return to how it had been.

But it couldn’t at the same time.

The thought of his pride being mistreated, abused, and murdered sat like a block of ice in his chest. He couldn’t ignore what had happened. He had to do something about it. Before becoming their alpha, he had been their strongest male. Eloise knew that and she had risked her life to travel across the world in search of him, to bring him back to the pride and restore peace at the village.

She wanted him to free them from the tyranny of the male he had left as their leader. He could see how important it was to her and that made it even more important to him.

He would do something about it, but he was damned if he was going to set foot in the village until the eight days were up. Once he was free of his status, Stellan would be the alpha and he would be just a challenger for that title. He could take down Stellan and pass on the position, remaining free of the pride rules.

He needed to find a way to stall her.

Eight days were all that stood between him and claiming the mate he craved with all of his heart.

Those eight days suddenly felt like forever.

He had the dreadful feeling that the woman he loved was about to be snatched from his grasp again.

Eloise stood in an expansive pale-walled room in the presence of her alpha, fighting to stop herself from looking at him and drinking in the sight of him as she wanted to. She had thought that she would be ready to see Cavanaugh again when she had heard that he worked at this nightclub in the heart of London.

She had been wrong.

He was as handsome as she remembered, maybe even more so now. The angular strong line of his cut jaw framed a face with intense stormy eyes and sculpted cheekbones, and the most profane mouth she had ever seen on a male. His sensual lips curved wickedly beneath his straight nose. The sight of him had her heart pounding and her palms sweating, and she had to keep reminding herself that he was the alpha of their pride.

A male far above her now.

He had been her friend once. Her best friend.

He had been more than that too.

They had been close for her entire life, and nearly eighty years into that friendship, around a decade ago, they had become more than friends. He had started visiting more often and had started looking at her differently, with hungry eyes that had awakened the true depths of her feelings for him.

She had been deeply aware of him whenever he had been around her, every stolen glance and smile, every innocent brush of their bodies. He had been approaching one hundred, the time of sexual maturity for snow leopard shifters, and she had known it was affecting him, because being around him had affected her. It had lured her to him and she had been powerless to resist.

Like a moth drawn to a flame, it hadn’t ended well for her.

She wasn’t sure now that it had ended well for him either.

She had been angry when he had left, but she had understood his motivation for doing it. He had tired of the constant fight to hold on to the pride.

Stellan had returned three years into Cavanaugh’s reign as alpha and had constantly challenged him. They had come to blows several times but Cavanaugh had always won, and the battles had never been as drawn out and brutal as the night Stellan had driven Cavanaugh from the pride.

Cavanaugh hadn’t returned, and even though it had hurt her, she understood why he had remained away. He had thought the pride was in better hands, but he was wrong.

His gaze bore into her but she kept her eyes on her worn boots.

They were about to fall apart. She felt as if she might join them. She was weary, bone-deep tired. All she really wanted to do was curl up somewhere and sleep, to rest as he had offered. It would be nice to sleep somewhere safe for once, without having to try to rest with one part of her alert and ready for anything.

She couldn’t stop now though. She had been scouring the world for him for two years, driven by a need to find him and bring him back to the pride. Her promise had kept her going through every cold night when she had been too afraid to sleep and every day when she had been so hungry she had wanted to cry.

Her promise and the thought of seeing him again.

The moment she had set eyes on him, standing behind the bar of the nightclub, his white shirt and wild silver hair making him stand out beneath the coloured lights, all of her strength had disappeared.

She had found herself on the brink of collapse, suddenly aware of how tired, hungry and weak she was.

Suddenly, painfully, aware of everything she had been through since leaving the pride, and everything that she had endured before that, when she had been in the village.

She wanted to give in to him and collapse into his arms and let him be strong for her, ached with a need to feel them around her and breathe him in, to feel him against her and know that he was real. It really was Cavanaugh standing before her, looking at her with concern in his beautiful stormy eyes.

She needed him to hold her and hold her together at the same time until she had found her feet.

But she couldn’t.

She was weak right now and she wouldn’t be able to find the strength to place the necessary distance between them again.

She had to hold herself back and deny the deep needs running through her.

She wasn’t here for only her sake and she had to remember that. People were counting on her to bring Cavanaugh back to the pride. She had promised the others that she would. She had sworn that she knew him well enough that she could find him, and she had. They believed in her, were depending on her and on Cavanaugh, and she wouldn’t fail them, even though part of her didn’t want him to return to the role of alpha.

She had missed him.

She had been missing him for ten years.

She had thought about leaving the pride to find him before, but her mother had been there. Her friends too. Leaving had been a frightening prospect, until Stellan had begun abusing his rights and had announced his plans. Then, staying had become frightening and leaving had been her only hope of helping her kin, and saving herself.