Free A Hunger So Wild by Sylvia Day Page A

arrival the day before stepped into his path. Sarah was a young Omega—he guessed mid-twenties—and exceptionally pretty, with long straight black hair and tip-tilted eyes.
    “Alpha.” She met his gaze shyly. “Allow me to tend your wounds.”
    He almost brushed her off, his emotions too volatile to welcome company. But her earnestness touched him. While there were many who would challenge him, there were others who needed a different sort of guidance—a soft touch and gentle words to go along with a firm hand. It was the sort of leadership he longed to provide and hoped he could eventually achieve once their situation became less precarious. “I’d be grateful if you would, Sarah.”
    Battery-operated lights lined the passageway. Gesturing at his office, he spoke over his shoulder to Vashti. “Grab your bag.”
    She muttered something under her breath, but complied. She joined him a few minutes later in his room, entering at the moment he had his hands on his fly. He shed his ruined pants and sat on the military locker placed at the foot of his air mattress. Sarah sank to her knees between his spread legs and opened the first-aid kit.
    “I’m not interrupting anything, am I?” Vash queried tightly.
    Elijah looked up at her, noting the rigidness of her jaw and her narrowed gaze. Nudity was nothing to a lycan, but perhaps it meant something to Vashti. Wondering if the vampress could possibly be feeling as proprietary about him as he felt about her, he reached out and tucked Sarah’s hair behind one ear. Vash stepped closer, the hand not holding her duffel wrapping tightly around the hilt of a blade strapped to her thigh.
    “Where’s my room?” she demanded. “I’ll give you some privacy.”
    “You’re standing in it.”
    Her gaze lifted from his cock to his eyes. “What?”
    “You’re rooming with me.”
    “Like hell.”
    Canting his arms back, he gripped the rear edge of the trunk and stretched his wounded leg out. “It’s the one place I can trust you’ll be safe.”
    “I can damn well take care of myself.”
    He took a deep breath, released it. “No argument, but the odds are against you.”
    “If I can’t fight off a pack of puppies, I deserve to bite it.”
    “And Syre would come down on me in a swarm of vamps. How much shit am I expected to have shoveled on me?”
    That knocked her back a bit. She looked at the queen-sized air mattress, clearly debating the risks and benefits of sharing it with him.
    “We’re both adults,” he pointed out. Then he groaned softly as Sarah smoothed ointment over his torn skin. He’d be healing faster if he was eating properly, but he was quickly becoming undernourished on the sparse amount of food to be found while roughing it. “Nothing will happen that you don’t want.”
    “I don’t want anything besides you keeping your end of our agreement.”
    “Then you’ve got no worries. Why don’t you show me those property specs you mentioned?”
    Vash stared at him for a long moment, then muttered something beneath her breath and dug in her bag. She set it down on the ground a moment later, her hand emerging from the depths with a folder clutched in her grip. She looked at Sarah, who was tying off a bandage. “Are you done yet?”
    Sarah’s gaze searched Elijah’s face for instruction.
    He dismissed her with an easy, “Thank you, Sarah.”
    The lycan closed the first-aid kit and said, “I’ll get you some dinner, Alpha. Esther made an awesome venison stew.”
    “I appreciate that.” Ideally, they’d each be eating their own deer, but they weren’t in a position to dine well under the circumstances. Instead they were divvying up what they caught among everyone, which kept them alive. Barely.
    “Also…” She offered a timid smile. “I’d like to stay with you when you make the arrangements to send some of us out with the vampires.”
    “Aw,” Vash crooned with syrupy sweetness. “Puppy love. How touching.”
    Sarah rose to her feet with