Craved by an Alpha by Felicity Heaton

studied her face, his grey eyes sharp and focused.
    She wasn’t sure what to say to him. She wanted to say that she had been enjoying their easy banter too, but she couldn’t get the words out. She couldn’t lay her heart on the line again, not after what had happened and not when nothing could come of it.
    She could only be a temporary thing to him, not his sole female. He could never reciprocate the feelings she harboured for him.
    “How is your mother?”
    Those four words leaving his lips chilled her to her marrow and instantly extinguished all of the heat he had built inside her.
    She looked away from him, at her knees and his right arm. “She died six months after you left.”
    “Shit.” He drew her closer to him and her resistance crumbled as his heat encased her, his scent filling her nostrils and comforting her. She leaned her head on his left shoulder and pressed her forehead against his neck, and stared beyond his arm, at the corner of the cave. He sighed and stroked her left arm, the soft motion giving her something to focus on other than the pain that had bubbled up inside her heart on having to tell him what had happened. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I hate that I wasn’t there for you, Eloise.”
    She did too.
    She turned her face towards him and fought the memories of that day and the ones that had followed it, and how much she had longed for Cavanaugh to be there, holding her as he was now, giving her the comfort and strength she had needed.
    He dropped his head and pressed his lips to her forehead.
    “Gods, I’m sorry,” he whispered against her skin and clutched her closer. “I bet she was mad at me for leaving.”
    Eloise smiled at the harsh self-reproach in his voice and nodded. “She was angry with you.”
    He sighed. “Something in your tone says she was more than angry with me, and about more than me leaving. She made it pretty clear whenever she looked at me that she hated me after I had to take the position of alpha.”
    She tried to shake her head but barely shifted it. It felt too heavy, as weighed down as her heart was right now.
    He already knew the truth. There was little point in lying to him, even if saying it straight was disrespectful to him.
    “She didn’t hate you for taking the position… she hated you for leaving me.”
    He stilled right down to his breathing.
    Eloise wasn’t sure what to do. Part of her wanted to push out of his arms while he was distracted by what she had said, and the rest wanted to wrap her own arms around him and tell him she was sorry for dealing such a low blow. She didn’t know what she was doing anymore. She didn’t want to hurt him, but sometimes she couldn’t stop herself from lashing out one way or another. Ten years of pent up hurt wanted to burst out of her and she couldn’t hold it back.
    “Eloise…” His voice dropped an octave and he tried to pull her closer but she resisted, finally finding the strength to push him away and gain some space between them. His silver eyebrows dipped low above his grey eyes as they searched hers, darting from one to the other. “You really think I wanted to take that position… that I wanted to leave you?”
    Gods, she didn’t know what to think when he said things like that. She wanted to believe him. She wanted to believe that he had been as in love with her as she had been with him, and that it had hurt him too, but she couldn’t get past her own hurt.
    She couldn’t get past the pain of spending five years watching him with other women, and the next five alone and afraid, sure she would never see him again and would be the next to die at Stellan’s hands.
    She couldn’t get past how he had never tried to talk with her or let her know the things he was telling her now.
    “You do,” he whispered, resignation and pain surfacing in his eyes. “You really do.”
    “There’s nothing else for me to think.” She shoved out of his arms, fell onto her knees and wrestled free of the