Blood Claimed

Talented at prophesying the future, what Zee has foreseen for her Aunt Michaela and Uncle Madadh will alter the future of the Blood Bound. Her own was always an elusive blank slate. Zee liked to think she molded her own destiny by utilizing her intellect, her law degree, and an inherited cunning needed to outwit her Machiavellian Uncle Jacques. Obtaining a law degrees in the early nineteenth century had required shrewdly negotiating with the scheming, amoral reprobate, plus her promises of maintaining her Witche glamour to disguise herself as a male (a necessity anyway to attend the Sorbonne). Changing her appearance, hiding or fleeing was second nature to Zee. Thrice she'd escaped her imprisonment (the convent where her Uncle Jacques had dumped her); she'd survived her Royal pain in the ass family who'd been intent on eliminating her for decades; and in Paris, for weeks she'd artfully dodged the persistent Sumaire intent on catching himself a tasty Fire Witche..... him and his huge, dumb shape-shifting black cat. An unusual frightening incident in San Francisco had awakened a potentially formidable new magical talent within, and precipitated her prematurely relocating to San Antonio, as the elderly widow, Mrs. Thomas. A boon, in hindsight. Emancipated from Uncle Jacques' guardianship, she'd finally locked the master manipulator into ironclad legal contracts, and for a small concession, maneuvered him into extending ridiculously favorable shipping and interest rates with his companies. In fact, thanks to those tremendous savings, Zee was about to embark on a business partnership, finally meet the reputable, extremely polite, principled attorney who had established a consortium: Alejandro Montealban. Zee couldn't have divined her well mannered, deliciously exotic new partner was the savage Jaguar God of Terrestrial Fire, or that they'd be fleeing to the jungles of Central America, evading a terrifying new threat. Nor that they were the first key to unlocking ancient mysteries of the Derkesthai Dragons. Blood Claimed in a ceremony two centuries in the making, Zee was about to discover the source of her newfound abilities, and exactly how duplicitous Uncle Jacques had been.