Craved by an Alpha Read Online Free Page B

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.
    Eloise risked a glance at Cavanaugh. He smiled at her and she realised that he was more handsome now. She hadn’t seen him smile like that, the warmth of it filling his dark grey eyes, for almost a decade. It made her feel awful. He had found his smile again in this place, far from their homeland and free from the pride and the struggles of being an alpha.
    Here she was trying to force him to come back with her, when he was close to being free of his position.
    His attempts to delay her had confirmed her suspicions.
    Pride rules stated that if an alpha remained out of the boundaries of the village for five years, their role would pass to another. Stellan had challenged Cavanaugh, had defeated him, but had failed to kill him. Cavanaugh still held the status of pride alpha. Stellan could only call himself their alpha, and he had ensured no one would dare stand up to him by killing the first three males who had tried.
    “Will you return with me?” she said, needing an answer, because she was wasting precious time.
    After discovering where he was, she had checked the flights out of London in an internet café. There was a flight tomorrow to New Delhi that would connect with a flight to Paro International Airport in