Claimed by the Primals

Chapter Fifteen

Before we continue, I want to fill you in on some shit that Kade and Warrick never told me, but I remembered on my own, so they didn't have to tell me. The big one being the reason behind the whole breeding program or schedule or whatever Eckhart, Matthias, and Anthony wanted to put me on.

Primal genetics are weird. It's magic, so it doesn't work like most other inheritable traits. For simplicity's sake, we're going to say that there are only two possibilities of what you are when you present.

ONE: You inherit your magic from either your mother or your sire, or biological father, however you chose to address him. Warrick, Kade, and Lana are all like this, along with ninety-nine percent of all other primals. Warrick and Lana inherited from their sires, Kade inherited from his mom.

There are absolutely no half and halves in primal biology. You go all the way to one side, or all the way to the other. Sorry, half-werewolf-half-vampire hybrid fans. That's just not possible in the real world.

Which parent a primal inherits from is an equal fifty-fifty. You would have a better chance at manipulating the roll of a dice or flip of a coin than guaranteeing the outcome of a primal kid. However, some circles of primals—like my father and his cult—believe whole-heartedly that the primal typing of their children can be influenced by when the female gets pregnant, who gets her pregnant, and it all depends on what she is.

That's why it was so important for them to know what I was. On top of being unable to actually claim and impregnate me before I fully presented, they needed to figure out who had the honor of "giving" me my first child. The angelic pantheon is obsessed with increasing their numbers and becoming the "dominant" species. I don't know if it's true or not, but there's a good chance that any one of my brothers that presented like my mom would have been killed. The only reason I was kept was because I'm female and dad could use me.

The only other possibility is...

TWO: You are a blank. Blanks are pretty much what they sound like. They don't have any kind of unique or remarkable magic, but they can do basic casts if they practice hard and long enough. There are two kinds. Inherited blanks are often called primal humans. The other kind are called glitches, because they have parents they should have inherited magic from but didn't. Blanks of either kind are super rare and super valuable, especially if they're female, because it the only guarantee that the child is going to inherit from the non-blank parent.

Next, old gods versus the new gods. It's a bit of a misnomer. Despite what Warrick told Lana, there is no actual evidence that the Egyptian gods came before the Christian one, just that the pantheon was worshiped first. Easiest way to think about it is if it's being actively worshiped by humans today, it's probably a "new" . Pantheons from Egypt, Greece, Rome, South America, and others are considered "old" because the number of active worshipers is so few due to how long it's been since the religion has been "relevant" in the human perspective.

The gods themselves vary wildly in their participation with their descendants. This is a part of what makes the Egyptian Primals particularly dangerous. There are a lot of gods for a small group of primals, they keep to themselves, and if you kill one of them you could have Osiris himself breaking down your door in the middle of the night looking for revenge. By contrast, the Roman gods haven't been seen in millennia. Personally, I think they're still sulking that the Greeks are more recognizable.

This is why dad wouldn't kill Warrick but had no problem tweaking his memory. It's also why he didn't kill Kade. While he isn't technically a part of any specific pantheon, he is quote-unquote "married" into the family so falls under the same protection.

None of this has anything specifically to do with what I wanted or needed to tell Warrick and Kade, and I'm not sure exactly when or if it will become relevant in the story. But, hey, I know I was killing myself over those questions when I was still in captivity, and who doesn't love a little background information?