Craved by an Alpha Read Online Free

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