Craved by an Alpha

by Felicity Heaton

  He shook his head and strode through the trees, stepping over the thick roots that littered the forest floor, and avoiding crushing the huge insects and small mammals under his boots. He wrapped his hands around the straps of his heavy backpack and adjusted it before scaling the incline, using the trees to navigate a path up to her, bracing his boots against their bases.

  When he reached her, she was still frowning at him, her honey-coloured eyes warmed by concern.

  “I didn’t sleep much.” It was the only explanation he was going to offer her. If she pushed, he might lie and say it was solely because he had wanted to protect her.

  In reality, it was partly because he had been as hard as a steel pole in his trunks all night, aroused by the thought that she slept in only a flimsy top and shorts beneath her thick sleeping bag and the memories of her hands on his chest and the fire that had burned in her eyes.

  Need he had felt in her and had commanded him to satisfy his mate.

  She walked on ahead of him again, her hips swaying in her beige trousers, drawing his gaze down to her backside.

  Cavanaugh scrubbed a hand over his mouth and groaned under his breath. He wasn’t sure he could last another night sleeping close to her. He had never slept with her before, not even in such an innocent fashion, with them tucked into separate sleeping bags. If he couldn’t find a spot to sleep in where he could have more distance between them, he was liable to leap on her and act on his desire. He wasn’t sure that was a good idea, even though his body and his mind were screaming that it was.

  It had been ten years since he had touched a woman, and since one had touched him. Ten years since he had been with Eloise. She had him fired up and constantly on edge around her, driven mad by his need of her. He had to rein it in though and somehow retain control, for both of their sakes.

  He dragged his gaze away from her, forcing himself to take in the forest as he walked. They were moving away from the river, taking a shortcut to a point where they could cross it. From there, it was a steep and tricky trek up the side of the mountain. He checked his watch. It wasn’t even noon. They were making good time. If they kept on like this, they might reach the top of the vertical ascent that lay ahead of them by nightfall.

  Cavanaugh slowed down, not wanting that to happen. He had planned to stop at the base of the sheer climb up the side of one of the mountains—the only path to the village. Eloise wouldn’t settle for that now. They would reach it by early afternoon. At best, he could convince her to stop halfway up the climb, where there was a cave his kin used as a shelter. It was large enough to provide them protection from any weather the mountain might throw at them, and for him to sleep a good distance from her.

  Eloise looked back at him again, a frown marring her pretty face. Gods, she was beautiful, even when she was scowling at him and looked ready to box his ears for being slow. A touch of colour rose onto her cheeks and she hastily looked away, but not before he noticed the way her eyes had darkened.

  Not with anger.

  But with desire.

  He groaned and picked up his pace, a slave to his need to be closer to her. She flicked another glance back at him as he neared her, a touch of nerves in her eyes now. She was breathtaking, flushed with life and vibrant, more like the woman he remembered her to be than the one she had become.

  What had happened to her?

  She had changed the day after the celebration of his ascension to the role of pride alpha, always avoiding him.

  Had what they shared meant so little to her?

  He hadn’t been sure back then, part of him convinced that it had meant something but the rest of him arguing against it, but he had wanted to know. He still wanted to know. He had watched her whenever she had thought he wasn’t looking, studying her for as long as he could without rousing suspicion, and he had sworn there had been hurt in her eyes at times.

  He had convinced himself that he had only seen what he had wanted to see, because he had been hurting.

  But things were different now.

  She was different.

  And it led him to believe that what they had shared had been real and they had both been hurt by his ascension.

  They both felt something for the other.

  Was it too late to make her see that?

  A few days ago, he might have answered that question with a yes and resolved to make her change her mind. Since the events of yesterday, his mind and his heart said no. It wasn’t too late for them.

  He had been petrified when he had been swimming, on the verge of trying again to convince her to come into the water, and he had spotted the tiger stalking her. She had been completely unaware of it, her eyes locked on him and a hint of desire rolling off her.

  His heart had stopped beating and had then exploded in his chest, the rush of it driving him into action. Everything primal within him, every instinct and sense, every feeling he owned, had demanded he protect her and take down the tiger if he had to go that far.

  When the beast had finally backed off, he hadn’t been able to stop himself from holding her. Then, she had touched him, telling him how scared she had been the night he had fought Stellan, making him believe that she had felt something for him and might still feel it. He had thought maybe he would get his wish.

  She would be his again.

  But she had pulled away.

  Why?

  Because of his status?

  He hated it. He hated the wall it had built between them and he was determined to tear it down. He wouldn’t allow anything to stand between them. He had been patient. He had waited for five long years, filled with a need to see her, to hear her voice and smell her scent again and feel her soft curves beneath his fingers. She had walked back into his life. She had come for him. He couldn’t stop himself from reading into that and seeing it as a sign. His patience would pay off. He could heal the breach between them and win her back.

  His wish would come true.

  She would become his mate.

  She led the way over the river and he followed her without really looking where he was going, wading through the water rather than traversing the rocks as she did, lost in his thoughts. When he reached the other bank and pulled himself up, she was looking at him again. Not with desire. This time she looked as if she was wondering whether he had lost his mind.

  He hadn’t lost that part of him.

  He had lost his heart though.

  It had been torn from his chest ten years ago and now he was slowly piecing it back together, gluing it with the hope that he could break down her defences and win her. He wanted her to surrender to him and their attraction to each other as she had a decade ago, showing him that she felt about him as he did about her, but part of him feared that if it happened before the full moon had risen, that it would only happen because he was her alpha.

  It was the same fear that had always held him back.

  The same rule that Stellan intended to use to make all the unmated females, regardless of their status, submit to him.

  Cavanaugh didn’t want such a union with her. It wasn’t right.

  It wasn’t what he wanted for them.

  He didn’t want a mistress.

  He wanted her to be his mate.

  He wanted her to love him. To have that, he had to wait until he was free of his status. Only then would he be sure that what she felt for him was real.

  It was getting more difficult by the second though. The longer he was around her, her scent filling his lungs and her curves tempting his eyes, the stronger his need to kiss her became. Every tree they passed, he fantasised about pinning her to it and stealing her breath with a kiss that would have her melting into him and moaning his name as she had the last night they had made love.

  He palmed the growing bulge in his dark grey trousers, shifting it into a more comfortable position.

  She glanced back at him again and he pretended he was fiddling with the hem of his charcoal fleece. He tugged it down a little so she wouldn’t notice
the effect she was having on him and kept walking, not daring to look at her until he felt her gaze leave him.

  He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. He wasn’t sure that even a vast distance between them would stop him from giving in to the pressing need to touch her, to kiss her and show her that he wanted her more than anything. He wasn’t sure he would be able to last another night with her.

  The need that had been gradually building inside him from the second he had spotted her in Underworld was reaching boiling point and he was burning for her.

  The forest began to thin as they ascended and the ground turned rocky underfoot. Eloise continued to lead, stealing more of his focus away from the world around him as they followed a steep trail up the mountainside. There were less predators for him to worry about up here. Tigers continued until several thousand metres up into the mountains, where their territories clashed with those of the snow leopards, but leopards were scarce up here and clouded leopards remained in the forest below.

  Eloise skidded back a step on the loose stony ground and huffed as she regained her footing, muttering beneath her breath. Cavanaugh guessed she was blaming the boots he had bought for her again. They were probably too new for such a trek, their thick soles and deep unworn grips making them slippery over some terrains, but they were far better than the ones she had sported before. He doubted she would have made it this far without falling flat on her face, or worse, if he had left her to attempt to traverse the forest and the mountain in her worn out boots.

  She trudged on ahead and he closed the distance between them as the path widened, trailing through the odd patch of scrub on the desolate mountainside. It was grey as far as the eye could see. Only the occasional group of trees that were hardy enough to survive at such an elevation broke up the monotonous landscape on the slope stretching ahead of him. The path was a paler wiggly line slowly ascending towards one such patch of trees. Beyond those, the mountain suddenly rose up as a vertical wall that would challenge the most adept of human climbers.

  In the distance behind him, a call went out, a low mournful sound that had his ears pricking. A snow leopard. He felt the big cat’s need beating within him too. It was a male looking for a receptive female.

  It wanted a mate.

  Eloise looked back at him, the sprinkling of rose across her cheeks saying she had heard the call too and knew what it meant. Cavanaugh prowled towards her, narrowing his eyes on hers with each step closer he came to her, and she dropped her gaze, the colour on her cheeks darkening.

  Gods, he wanted to kiss her when she looked so shy and beautiful.

  “We should hurry if we’re going to start our ascent today.” She scurried away from him and he grunted, wanted to growl out his frustration over the way she kept escaping him, and then stalked after her, driven by a need to hunt her.

  His snow leopard form shifted restlessly beneath his skin, wanting out. He wanted to transform and obey his compelling need to walk for a while in his other form, but he couldn’t. It was safer for both of them if he remained in his human one. The big cats in the area would view him more as a threat in this form. In his other form, they might want to fight over territory with him.

  He didn’t want to fight in front of Eloise, not after her soft confession last night.

  He didn’t want her to be afraid for him again.

  She scrambled up the steepest part of the path to join the one that intersected it and led along the ridge towards the trees and the vertical wall of rock they needed to scale.

  Cavanaugh followed her, only briefly looking behind him towards the direction the call had come from, unable to deny his desire to see the snow leopard. He hadn’t seen one in years, except for himself in the mirror of the playroom. He hated seeing himself in his snow leopard form though, because it made him think of Eloise. It took him back to all the times they had trekked together and played in their cat forms, and he ended up aching with a need to see her that lasted for days.

  She stopped at the base of the wall in amidst the trees and looked up the height of it. Several hundred metres of sheer grey rock, with few handholds and only one place to rest. It was a challenge he relished. This was the point he had always looked forwards to when journeying to or from the village.

  Just the sight of it had his heart beating harder, pumping adrenaline through his veins as his body prepared for the exhilaration and strain of the ascent.

  He slipped his pack off and undid it, taking out everything that was necessary, including a smaller pack that would have to suffice from this point forwards. It was large enough to accommodate his sleeping bag, the food, the canteen, and a change of clothes. He stashed the bigger pack in a crevice where no one would find it.

  Eloise was already stripping down to her base layer of a long-sleeved thermal top. He stared at her, unabashed even when she glanced his way. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. The tight top hugged her breasts and stirred hunger within him, reawakening the fierce need to draw her into his arms and kiss her.

  Cavanaugh dragged his eyes away from her and busied himself by following her lead, removing his fleece and t-shirt, and replacing them with a similar black thermal top. It was chilly with only the thin layer, but snow leopards could cope with extreme cold, and it wouldn’t be long before the exertion of scaling the sheer rock face had him warmed up. Even in such a flimsy layer, he would end up hot and sweaty by the time they reached the small cave halfway up the several hundred metres high sheer wall.

  He stepped into his harness and made sure it was tight and secure around his hips before picking up the one for Eloise.

  She tensed as he approached her, triggering his desire to stalk her, to hunt her and make her surrender to him. He tamped down that need and swallowed hard, fighting to get his mind off what he was about to do and shut down the way his body was reacting to just the thought of it.

  It was no use.

  The moment he kneeled in front of her, his gaze level with her hips, he lost the battle against his body. All of his blood rushed south, making him instantly hard in his trousers. He drew in a deep breath and it only made things worse, filling his senses with her scent. He wet his lips and held the black harness out to her. She stepped into it, caught her left boot on the straps, and jerked forwards. Her hands came down on his shoulders to steady her, sending fire blazing along his bones.

  He growled and she snatched them back, a little gasp escaping her.

  He hadn’t meant it as a threat and she knew it. She had sensed the desire within him, the need that pounded in his blood, and had heard it in his hungry growl.

  “Sorry,” she whispered and he mentally cursed her for apologising again.

  She could touch all she wanted, as long as she initiated things. That was the rule he had to keep in place so he would know that she wanted him, that whatever happened between them wasn’t because he was her alpha.

  He had drawn a line between them and she had to be the one to cross it.

  She had to be the one to show him that what they had shared a decade ago hadn’t been one-sided. She had been in love with him.

  As he was in love with her.

  He tugged the harness up her legs, fastened it in place around her hips, and stepped away from her, giving himself a moment to bring his hungers back under control. He grabbed the rope they would be using for the ascent and tugged it, testing its strength. He threaded the rope through his harness and made sure it was secure before taking a final deep breath.

  Cavanaugh turned around to face her.

  She stood a short distance away, retying her rich brown hair, preparing herself for the climb. It needed zero distractions and one hundred percent of their focus. There were no points on the climb where they could attach themselves to anchors in the rocks. Protecting the pride meant leaving nothing on the wall that could be used by humans to reach the top and the hidden valley there.

  The only security he and Eloise would have was each other.

  He closed the gap between
them and threaded the rope through her harness, his gaze fixed on his work. It was nice to finally be linked to her in a way, even if it was only through a rope. He tugged it, checking it was secure and wouldn’t slip free of the harness. He needed to know that it would take her weight if she slipped.

  He couldn’t lose her.

  He had spent too long without her as it was.

  He would sooner die than face the rest of his life without her.

  He lifted his gaze to her face, immediately losing himself in her deep honey-coloured eyes. They bravely held his, even when her heart accelerated in his ears, quickening her breathing with it, and the sharp scent of nerves laced her sweet scent.

  “Cavanaugh?” she whispered breathlessly, her soft voice teasing him into drawing her closer to him, tugging on the rope that connected them and not stopping until she was mere inches from him.

  Her head tilted back, her eyes still holding his.

  His heart beat harder and he couldn’t breathe as he stared down into her eyes, the air growing thick around them once more.

  He wanted to kiss her, needed just one kiss to build his confidence, not just for the climb ahead of them but for his battle to win her, but he wasn’t sure how she would react to it.

  His fingers flexed around the smooth rope.

  He backed off a step and let it slip through his grasp, and turned away from her, lifting his head towards the sheer rock wall.

  He couldn’t kiss her, and not only because he had vowed she would be the one to make the first move.

  He stared at the dark grey cliff face that loomed over him.

  He couldn’t kiss her because he didn’t need to try to climb it with a painful rejection clouding his mind.

  One second was all it would take.

  One second in which his focus slipped.

  One second that would spell the end of their forever.

  Chapter 7

  Eloise gripped with her left hand and swung herself across to her right, reaching for the next hold she had spotted there. She caught it with the tips of her fingers and pulled herself forwards, improving her grip on the narrow gap in the grey rock wall.