Owen closed the door, rounded the compact car and slid into the driver’s seat. He twisted at the waist and put his bag on the back seat, and then put the key into the ignition and started the car. The engine growled to life and he flicked the switch for the lights, checked the road and pulled out. He tugged his seatbelt on as he drove and glanced across at Cait.

“Buckle up.” He waited to see she was doing as instructed, tugging the slim black belt across her chest, before returning his focus to the road.

It was quiet, the night drawing on, making it easy going as he navigated the short journey deep into an affluent neighbourhood near the centre of London.

Cait’s eyes grew wider by the moment as she stared out of the windows, taking in the buildings. When he drove through large black wrought iron gates, her eyes shot impossibly wide and she looked across at him. He kept his eyes on the road, unwilling to field her silent question, slowing the car as he drove through the rows of beautiful pale townhouses.

He turned left down another side road where the biggest houses were located and pulled the car into a reserved parking spot outside his one. Cait was still staring at him. He turned the engine off, undid his seatbelt, gathered his bag, and stepped out of the car.

She followed him a moment later, her eyebrows pinned high on her forehead as she finally looked away from him, her gaze settling on the huge four storey Georgian townhouse behind him.

“What you pictured?” he said before locking the car and turning his back on her. He strode towards the short black iron gate, opened it and glanced over his shoulder at her.

She hurried towards him, her eyes flitting between him and the house.

It was too big for him.

He used the sum total of five rooms out of the possible fourteen.

“This is yours?” She spoke at last, her gaze on the white townhouse, slowly drifting up the height of it.

Owen walked up the path, took the steps up to the covered porch with its Grecian columns, and unlocked the wide black wooden door. He pushed it open, proving it was his.

“It belongs to my family,” he said as way of an explanation when she looked at him again. “It costs a small fortune to run, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to part with it.”

“You grew up here.” It wasn’t a question. She looked him right in the eye as she said it, her expression sober, and he nodded.

It wasn’t often he met someone who could see straight through him as Cait could. Most people didn’t seem to understand him at all.

The humans he met who weren’t hunters, and therefore were unaware of the world of fae and demons that co-existed with theirs, weren’t worth his time. He had nothing he could talk about with them, not as normal people did. He couldn’t gripe about his work week over a beer with a buddy. The hunters avoided him because he wasn’t aligned with any of the organisations they worked for and only exchanged information when it suited them.

The fae and demons preferred to keep him at arm’s length because of his profession.

The only people he could really talk to and who had ever understood him were his family, and those who had been closest to him were dead now. He had a handful of relatives remaining, mostly from his mother’s side, and he rarely saw them.

“You live here alone.” Cait’s soft voice drew him out of his thoughts and he sighed as he looked at her where she now stood on the porch beside him, close enough that he could smell her sweet perfume on the night breeze.

He nodded again. “I keep most of the rooms closed and use just the ones I need… bathroom, bedroom… living room… kitchen. I did make one of the other reception rooms into a gym and training room.”

She looked as if she was on the verge of saying it sounded lonely, so he turned his back on her, stepped into the hall and switched on the lights. Thankfully, she took the hint and remained silent as she entered behind him and closed the door.

Owen locked it and pocketed his keys. “Come on. I’ll get you settled in the living room.”

He led the way up the wooden staircase to the first floor and the large pale blue room he used for his living room. He grimaced as he realised he had left it in a worse state than he had thought.

Cait drifted past him before he could say anything in warning, a twinkle in her eyes as they danced over all of the weapons spread across the large oak table on the left side of the room, and all the knickknacks he had left strewn across the square wooden coffee table nestled in the U of his three black leather couches in front of the fireplace.

She ambled around the room and he watched her as she allowed her fingers to drift over a few items on the coffee table and checked out some of his weapons.

“It looks very much as I had expected in here.” She lifted her eyes away from the crossbow she held and smiled across the room at him. “I imagined weapons and books.”

She looked around at the stacked bookcases that lined the wall to his right between the tall sash windows and the one behind him, and then down at the sheets of paper, notepads, and newspapers stacked haphazardly on a smaller coffee table beside an armchair.

“Although… it has an air of bachelor about it too.” Her smile teased him and he shrugged.

She hadn’t seen his bedroom.

If she thought this room looked like a bachelor owned it, she was in for a shock if she set eyes on his inner sanctum.

Her blue eyes drifted over the couches and then roamed back to him, gaining a dark edge of desire that set his pulse pounding and left him feeling she might just want to see that inner sanctum.

He was damned if she was going to see it as it was though.

He wasn’t sure how hellcats lived, or what accommodation they were used to, but he was fairly certain that as a woman she wasn’t impressed by clothes strewn across the floor, unmade beds, and several empty take out cartons, and that was exactly what his bedroom contained.

“You seem to favour magic.” Cait set the crossbow down and Owen stared at her, his heart pounding for a different reason as he took in what she had said. When she frowned and gestured to all the knickknacks covering the coffee table, his gaze leaped there and his heart settled. “The items… they’re magic aren’t they?”

Owen quickly nodded. “I get them in the fae town nearby. Some I use, others are just part of a collection.”

He backed towards the door.

“You like magic?” She looked at him again.

Owen took another step backwards and gave a noncommittal shrug in answer.

“I have to get changed and get some stuff together. Make yourself comfortable.”

He turned and walked out of the room, feeling her gaze boring into his back, intense and focused, as if she was trying to strip away the layers of his defences to uncover a truth he preferred to keep hidden.

A secret he’d had for most of his life and had kept from his father.

A secret only one living person in this world knew.