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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.
     
     

Chapter 3
    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