Craved by an Alpha (2 page)

He would never do such a thing to his Eloise. He would never dishonour her in such a way or treat her as if she was his inferior. As much as it killed him, he would wait for her.

He would wait forever if that was what it took.

Another of the demons, a handsome dark-haired male, clapped a hand down on her shoulder and pulled her back around to face him, a seductive smile curving his lips.

The acrid tang of fear tainted her sweet scent.

Cavanaugh snarled and reacted on instinct. He pressed one hand into the bar top and easily vaulted it. The patrons on the other side gasped and rushed out of his path, and he landed silently on his booted feet. He shoved through the crowd, not caring how many fae or demons he pissed off as he made a beeline for her and the male who had dared to frighten her.

He pushed the last of the patrons out of his way and had his hand on her arm a heartbeat later. A thunderbolt zinged along his bones, setting him on fire and detonating the ticking bomb that was his temper. He growled through his emerging fangs as he yanked her behind him, tearing a gasp from her, and placed himself between her and the demons.

He slammed the flat of his other palm against the demon’s broad chest, shoving him into the four behind him. The demon growled at him, a corona of fire around his irises warning Cavanaugh that he was close to changing, his horns on the verge of emerging and revealing what he was to the humans around them.

Cavanaugh snarled back at him, the club brightening as his eyes began to transform, turning silver. His blood pounded and every instinct he possessed roared at him to protect Eloise. He fought the fierce need to shift, battling his snow leopard form as it writhed beneath his skin, stirred by his hunger to rip the demon male to shreds with his claws.

The demon straightened to his full height, standing almost five inches taller than Cavanaugh’s six-foot-six, and stared him down. Cavanaugh didn’t flinch. He held the male’s gaze as it brightened too, beginning to glow red. One of the male’s friends muttered something and touched his shoulder, and the male looked away from Cavanaugh, glancing beyond him to the bar.

Cavanaugh could feel Kyter there, watching what was happening. His silent backup.

He appreciated the support from his boss, especially when the demons cast him one last glare before disappearing into the crowd. He remained still, watching them go, breathing hard to steady himself and calm his need to shift. He would be out of his job, and his home, if his boss had to explain to the local authorities how a snow leopard had suddenly appeared in Underworld.

When the demon males had moved to the edges of his senses, Cavanaugh became aware of his hand and the delicate arm it gripped. He became aware of her where she stood behind him, trembling, and not only because of fear. There was fatigue there too, and something else.

The same reason he was shaking inside?

He had imagined this moment a thousand times or more. It hadn’t gone exactly as he had planned and it had come too early, but life loved to screw with him and he would find a way to roll with it.

He drew down a deep breath, held it, and slowly turned to face her.

She lifted her eyes up to his, their striking golden-brown depths hitting him hard. He always had loved them, had been able to stare into them for hours while she talked to him, laughed, and smiled. They expressed all of her feelings.

Tonight they made him feel cold inside.

They were haunted.

Her pain was clear in them.

She dropped her eyes to her feet and he frowned at how she held herself, her free arm tucked against her chest. Defensive. Afraid.

The scars on her wrists caught his eye again and he went to touch them but she edged back a step, placing her free arm beyond his reach. He lowered his hand, not wanting to frighten her or make her feel uncomfortable. He wanted to do the opposite. He wanted to comfort her.

The club crowd closed in again, jostling him. The music pounded, hurting his ears and irritating him. He fought the deep need to flash his fangs at the people around them to drive them away from Eloise to remove some of her fear. He wanted to vanquish it all. His deepest primal instincts demanded he take her somewhere safe in order to make that happen. Somewhere she would no longer feel afraid. Somewhere quieter where they could talk.

Somewhere they could be alone.

He tugged her with him through the crowd, shoving everyone out of his way again as he headed for the bar.

“Someone cover my space?” he shouted over the din as he reached the end of the bar.

Kyter nodded, losing his gloomy air for a second, a look in his golden eyes as he dropped them to Eloise and then pinned them back on Cavanaugh. He would answer the jaguar shifter’s questions later. Right now, he needed to know what had happened to Eloise to bring her all the way out here, so far from home.

Had she come for him? Or had she come for a different reason?

His heart said to let it be him, but he didn’t dare hope that he was the reason she was here.

He pulled her to his left, into a shadowy corner of the club, and up to the door in the black wall that led into the back. He punched in the code on the silver panel, twisted the knob, and pushed the heavy door open. It was only then he released Eloise.

He held the door for her. She slowly passed him, her pack shifting with each wary step she took into the warmly lit large space that acted as a huge hallway, with doors punctuating the wall to his right that led to the gym, playroom and offices, and a metal staircase against the wall on his left that led up to the apartments for the staff. When she was clear of the door, he stepped through and let it swing shut behind him. It slammed, the sound echoing around the expansive pale room.

Eloise jumped and whirled to face him. The grey hood of her coat fell back with the motion, revealing her to him.

“Sorry,” he muttered and she dropped her eyes to her feet again.

Cavanaugh silently cursed her. When he had imagined their reunion, she hadn’t been so damned meek. She had been the woman he had known a decade ago, before shit had gone south. She had been as beautiful and radiant as she had been back then too, her eyes bright and not haunted, her skin pale and clear, not scarred around her wrists and dark beneath her eyes.

The sight of her and her behaviour clawed at him, filling him with a dark need to discover what had happened to her and take action against anyone who might have harmed her.

He shook with that need, a storm brewing in his heart, a dangerous tempest that needed a target—someone he could make suffer as Eloise clearly had.

A target other than himself.

Right now, he could only place the blame on his own shoulders and it tore him apart, ripping his heart to shreds and filling his mind with poisonous words, ones that stung and made him bleed.

Eloise would never forgive him.

Eloise would never be his.

Cavanaugh mastered his fear and drove it back into submission, clearing his head of the dark words that taunted him and steadying his heart, reassuring himself that all wasn’t lost. Eloise was here with him. She had come for him. He needed to focus on taking care of her and discovering what had happened to her to bring her to London, a world away from their village in the mountains of Bhutan.

“What are you doing away from the pride?” He ventured a step towards her and was thankful when she didn’t move away to maintain the distance between them. He needed to be close to her. He needed reality to sink in so he could believe she was here with him, standing in the bright back room of Underworld, and he was talking to her for the first time since he had assumed the role of alpha a decade ago, about to hear her sweet voice again. “What happened to you?”

He reached out and gently caught her wrist, bringing it up between them and luring her towards him. He lightly rubbed his thumb over the scarring on it, marks that looked as if they had been made by ropes. Who had done this to her? Whoever it had been, Cavanaugh was going to find them and tear them to pieces. He was going to make them suffer as she had. A growl rumbled through his chest and curled up his throat, born of a dark and consuming hunger to avenge her.

She pulled free of his grip and hid her arms behind her back.

“Goddammit, Eloise,” he barked and she lowered her head, turning her face away from him.

The rich brown waves of her long hair fell down to conceal her face but didn’t hide how her shoulders trembled beneath her dirty coat. He reined in his frustration. He could sense her struggle, could smell it in the subtle changes in her scent. It was taking a lot for her to remain silent when she felt compelled to obey the rules of their kind and answer him.

Why wouldn’t she answer him? He needed to know what had happened to her. It filled him completely, an incessant urge that he couldn’t shake, born of his deep connection to her. He feared he would go mad or lose his temper if she insisted on remaining silent and refused to tell him what had happened to her.

He would go mad if she refused to look at him or give him the pleasure of hearing her voice too. Couldn’t she see that?

He clenched his fists at his sides to stop himself from grabbing her slender shoulders and making her look at him, and looked at her instead, seeing how different she was now. He missed the female who had stood up to him countless times and had put him in his place. That woman seemed to have disappeared that fateful night when he had recognised her as his fated female but hadn’t been given a chance to tell her. She had been ripped from his grasp when he had been forced to take his place in the pride upon his father’s death, picking up his mantle.

As alpha.

Cavanaugh felt as if he had lost her then and his heart had fractured. She had drifted away from him, always leaving when the females of status within the pride approached him, even when he had yearned for her to stay.

He had ached for her to look at him and smile, and let him know that she was okay.

He hadn’t wanted the attention from the females. He had wanted hers. He had wanted them, as they should have been, together.

He had craved her.

Still craved her.

“Why are you here?” he whispered, still aching for her to look at him and smile, and let him know that she was okay.

He ached to hear her voice again and hear her tell him that she had come for him. He needed her to put him out of his misery. He needed her to tell him that nothing had changed between them despite everything that had happened and that there was a chance for him. He needed it as he had never needed anything before, as if it was as vital as air in his lungs or a beat in his chest. She had power over him as no other did. Not even the male who had come close to defeating him could contend with her.

She had the power to crush him, to kill him.

And she did it with only a handful of words.

“Please come back to the pride.”

Those words struck his already aching heart like daggers, each one sending pain blazing outwards from the centre of his chest.

She hadn’t come for him because she had wanted to be with him. He had been a fool to allow his heart to convince him that she’d had the courage he had lacked and had come to wait out the days with him until they could be together again.

She was here on pride business.

“You came all this way to ask me that?” He frowned at her, his tone flat and as empty as he felt inside as everything sank in. Nothing had changed. Five years of hell followed by five years of torture, and they still had a wall between them, a barrier that seemed impenetrable. He wanted to tear it down, but it was intangible, constructed of tradition and rules that went back millennia, laws that were so ingrained in them that they couldn’t break free and were slaves to them. “I left the pride, Eloise. I have no interest in returning to it. I have no reason to go back there. The pride doesn’t need me. It has an alpha.”

“The pride needs you.” She lifted her head a fraction and he thought she might look him in the eye and put a little fire behind her words, but she remained meek and polite.

The way a female of her status should speak to her alpha.

He growled and stalked towards her, and she backed away, turning more submissive as she wrapped her arms around herself.

“The pride doesn’t need me.” He stopped short of saying that she did though, and he needed her. He reached out to seize her arm but she flinched away, stopping him in his tracks. He softened and looked at her, seeing a broken and hurt female, not the strong and confident one she had been a decade ago. Fury filled him, burning fiercely in his veins, flooding him with a need to know what had happened to her. That need blazed in his heart, demanding that he ask her and make her answer him this time. “What the hell happened to you, Eloise? Who did this to you?”

She swallowed hard and finally looked up at him, right into his eyes, but still refused to tell him. “The pride needs you. You’re the strongest male and our alpha. Please. Return with me.”

“I told you. I’m not interested in returning.” He wanted to reach out and smooth his hand along the soft curve of her jaw to keep her golden-brown eyes on him, but he didn’t have the heart when she looked as if it was taking her great effort not to lower her gaze again.

“I travelled two years to find you… to bring you back to the pride.”

He wished she had stopped at the first part, where she had only travelled two years to find him.

The pain in her eyes increased, her fear a palpable thing now that hung in the air between them, and it forced him to listen. What had happened at the pride? Concern for his village grew in his heart but concern for Eloise overshadowed it, pulling the focus of his thoughts back to her.

She must have searched for him across Bhutan, India and Europe, no doubt flashing his photograph to any fae or demon she came across. What terrible thing had happened to drive her to such a desperate and dangerous act?

Had she gained her scars during her search for him? Had some of the fae or demons captured her and held her for some nefarious reason?