“I convinced her not to,” Haman declared. “I explained that if she approached Haman, it would create a terrible scandal. His engagement would be broken, and his entire family would be disgraced. Of course, your mother was very surprised to hear this, and that he was engaged. For her, it had just been one of the usual ruts that shifter females engage in to get through their heat.”

That note of disgust entered his voice again, and I wanted to punch him in the face. Who was he to judge us? Did his race not create us to be like this?

“In any case, your mother did not want anything particular from him; she simply felt you ought to know your father.”

“Clearly, you didn’t feel the same,” I said, bitterness creeping into my voice.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Ballos protested. “I was doing your mother a favor! Your father might have taken you away from her, to Castalis, and hidden you away in shame. More likely, given their attitude to shifters, he would have repudiated you altogether. As a mage-shifter hybrid, you would not have had much of a future anyway, and I told her so.”

I opened my mouth, anger burning like hot coals in my stomach, then closed it. What the hell could I possibly say to that? Ballos was right—all of those things were very possible futures for me, had my mother told Haman about my existence. But still, what if there was a chance he would have loved me? After all, Ballos seemed to think my father had been infatuated with my mother. Surely, there had been a chance.

“If my father doesn’t know that I exist,” I said slowly, curling and uncurling my fists in my lap, “then who put the binding on my magic?”

“I did,” Ballos said. “As a favor to Haman, who was one of my better students. I told your mother that in exchange for her silence regarding your father’s name, I would bind your magic so tightly that it would go undetected by the school tests. I performed the spell shortly after your birth, though it was difficult since, even then, you showed evidence of very strong talent.” Something like regret passed in his eyes. “It is too bad that you were not born a full mage—you would have made Haman proud.”

“Yeah, pity that.” I sneered, unable to keep the scorn from my voice now. “It’s clear to me that everyone would prefer I wasn’t a hybrid.”

“Well, it would make the lives of everyone much easier,” Ballos said with another sniff. “But I suppose what’s done is done, and you have made yourself a good life, all things considered.”