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“She’s four and she’s not mine. Nia chooses to be with me, she’s my familiar. Our connection goes beyond any normal pet–owner relationship.” I grinned. “And we can talk to each other.”

Ebony screwed up her face. “Do you think I’m an idiot?”

“You want me to prove it?”

Her eyes narrowed with a good dose of disbelief. “Go on, then.”

“What did you have for breakfast, Nia?”

Girl gave Nia sausages. Nia loves sausages. Nia likes girl.

I chuckled and looked at Ebony. “Sausages. They’re Nia’s favorite, and now you are as well.”

Ebony’s mouth fell open. “There’s no way you could know that!”

I cut a piece of bacon and topped it with some egg. “Like I said, we can communicate.”

Ebony leaned forward. “How?”

“Some witches have a little something extra. We’re given special magic abilities, and mine is the ability to speak to animals.” I looked up from my food and stilled.

Draven stood in the open door again, like he had the night before.

Ebony spun away from me. “Alpha!”

“You’re good at that,” I said.

He lifted a brow.

“Sneaking up on people.”

He studied me for long, uncomfortable seconds. “Yes, I am.”

There was a lot of warning in those words and the tone of his voice.

Okay, so he hadn’t woken up this morning and decided to not hate me. The fact I wasn’t who he thought I was didn’t seem to have made much difference.

Then he ignored me as Ebony stood and ran to him. He didn’t bark orders at her like he had last night. Instead, he pulled her in for a hug. Wolves were tactile, a lot of shifters were, but I’d yet to see it from this particular wolf. He pressed his nose to the top of her head and breathed in her scent. “You’ve been a big help, Ebs. You’ve pleased your alpha.”

She tilted her head back and beamed up at him.

The smile he gave her back was gentle and filled with affection, and my heart almost stopped in my chest at the beauty of it. He loved this child, and I strongly believed after witnessing this exchange that he had looked at every member of this pack like that at one time.

“Your mother will be missing you. You head on home.”

“Okay, alpha.” She turned and rushed back to Nia, kissed her furry head, then turned and ran from the room.

“You’re good with her. She loves you—”

He turned back to me, and the smile was gone, the look on his face stopping me in my tracks. “Don’t talk to me about her or anyone else in my pack.”

Why did that sting? It shouldn’t. I didn’t know him, and he didn’t know me. “You still hate me then?” I asked. He didn’t reply. “I was hoping we could try to mend bridges between my coven and your pack. We owe you, Draven. What Selene did was inexcusable. That’s not the way we treat our allies. But now that you know the truth, who I really am…and well, I still need someone to help me with this trial. My coven would give you whatever you wanted—”

“Mend bridges?” he said, voice filled with silent fury. “You think I would help you? I owe you not one fucking thing, little witch.”

I couldn’t hold his icy stare. God, I just kept putting my stupid foot in my mouth. “I’m sorry, that was insensitive. There’s nothing we could do to take back what she did or return what you lost.” But for some reason, I didn’t like the idea of him hating me, so I pushed on when I knew I shouldn’t because some stupid needy part of me wanted him to know that I wasn’t like Selene. “But if you’d consider my offer…”

“I don’t want anything to do with you, Iris. You are a Thornheart, which means you have the same toxic blood running through your veins as the rest of your twisted family.”