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spend an eternity with him. It hurt, but it was a possibility he had considered before. The thing was he craved her to depths of his rotting soul and he knew an affair, long or short, was never going to satisfy him. He wanted her to hunger for him with the same fever he felt for her. To need him with the same ferocity. It was a wish he hated to concede he may never get.
    He stood and walked down the hall to the other office hoping to find Winter. He had to debrief her, and hell, maybe she had some ideas on fixing his life, because right now it felt like a train wreck.
    "What are you doing up?" Winter asked.
    Or not. She sat on the edge of Marcus's desk and gave him a withering look that would have made everyone else wince. Dupree didn't feel chastised in the least. He'd been watching out for Winter and Gia since the three of them became friends over sixty years ago. Until a few weeks ago Dupree had been afraid he'd lose them both to their demons and that was enough to make him break out in a cold sweat. He'd lost too damned many people over the years. His brothers and his parents. Friends. Liza.
    But Winter was stable now with her mate, Marcus, and if--when--they found Gia, she had her lover, Luke, to ground her. The nightwalker fed off psychic energy and relieved the pressures of Gia's demon without having to form the blood bond. He hoped like hell wherever she was she'd be okay until she could return to Luke. Her disappearance was tearing the walker up.
    That left him the most unstable predator among them, but he refused to give in before he ensured everyone, including Kara, would remain safe. It would rip his heart out but the best way to do that was to keep his distance. Somehow he'd get her to promise not to merge, find Gia and make sure she was taken care of, and then do the honorable thing and take his own life before he lost what was left of his soul to the demon.
    "Dupree?"
    Right. Winter had asked him what he was doing up. Paper rustled as he clenched his fist.
    "Going through patrol reports." Which were so not his highest priority right now. "The demons are back to moving in three to four man packs, and the attacks are few and spread out. We dealt them a major blow."
    She smiled. "Yes, we did."
    But they both knew it wouldn't last.
    "The quad leaders mentioned that a couple of the nightwalkers don't play well with others," he said as Marcus came in and sat behind the desk.
    "Get their names to Luke," Marcus said. Dupree nodded. The three races had formed an informal Alliance back in the fifties. But centuries of animosity didn't disappear overnight. The secretive, reclusive nightwalkers were the worst. Winter and Marcus were determined to change that so the hybrids had begun running patrols with the walkers and lupines. No one dared suggest the lupines and nightwalkers team up, though. That rift was too ancient to breach so easily or quickly.
    "What else? You have that look."
    "What look?"
    "The expecting all hell to break loose look," Winter joked.
    "Oh yeah, it's going to. This afternoon I did a swing by of some of the compounds we're selling and found Baas Contee dead in Ben's old office."
    "Holy shit, Dupree, you should have called me," Winter barked. He could feel her anger, sharp and pulsing in the air for a few seconds before she got it under control, and didn't blame her one damned bit. But he'd had his reasons for waiting to tell her in person.
    "You never know who's around here these days and you couldn't go running out if you were in the middle of something. Until we have details to take to Gray, this needs to stay quiet. You rush out of here and people will talk."
    "As it happens, there wasn't anyone here," she grumbled but let it go. "What do we know?"
    "Not much. It definitely wasn't Ben and Timothy says the wounds weren't demon claws, but it looked like the work of a demon until Tim got him back in the lab." He gave her a minute to digest that. "He was unrecognizable. I knew him because I've seen the