Page 71 of House of Kallan
“Any and every time you want to,” I answered.
“Smooth,” he said. I didn’t get a chance to respond before his mouth was on mine. And here, in this magic pocket of night, we shared our first kiss. A very long, sensual, deep kiss.
Tatum
I wasn’tsure what it was, but something someone said at Bael’s welcome home party stuck with me and I found myself in The Harem Project library any spare chance I got. There wasn’t something specific I was looking for. I couldn’t even put it into words, really, which made it entertaining when someone wanted to join me.
Today it was Hawthorn.
The best I could express was that I was looking for notes that might date back to when supernaturals first began emerging and breaking into different species. I believed that the classes might have always been there, but then… maybe not.
As I was splitting the kids up the other day, it became very apparent that so many of our classifications overlapped. So, who decided which species belonged where?
There was a moment in evolution where you can almost pinpoint where different species split into new species. Those places where our ancestral family tree branched over and over again.
I was looking for those moments, except something a little clearer. For instance, I wanted to see at what pointCanidae were removed from the overall shifter class. Was it because there were so many different kinds of Canidae as opposed to other types of shifters? I wanted to see whatexactlydetermined a phoenix was an aerial instead of a shifter. At what point did an elemental Canidae come into existence? Was it the crossbreeding between one of the Canidae shifters and a fae?
Basically, I wanted to learn about new species coming into existence. At what point did we say, ‘that jaguar was the eightieth randomly born with wings. This is no longer an anomaly but a new species.’?
For all the shit that Silence was doing—and though their reasons for creating these children were not moral, ethical, and anything that made this acceptable in civilized society—theywerecreating new species.
But could we call them new species? When they grew up, what type of offspring wouldtheycreate? Would the traits in their young combine that of the parents? Would they just take on the traits of the genetically stronger species?
I realized that there weren’t going to be answers to these questions. I knew I hadn’t even touched the surface on the number of questions these kids were going to have about themselves as they aged.
So anything I could find would hopefully be helpful.
The thing was, I hadn’t found anything. All the texts that I could get my hands on spoke about the species as if we’d always existed. This was just the world we were born into. Where were our origin stories? Humans had a very long line of evolutionary history that they’ve been mapping out over the centuries. What about supernaturals?
Rubbing a hand over my face, I sighed. I might not know exactly what I was looking for, but I knew I was finding nothing.
I looked up as Hawthorn came around the corner empty handed. “Nothing?”
He shook his head.
“Do you think there’s another archive somewhere?”
“There definitely could be,” he said.
“Maybe I’m going about this wrong,” I said, glancing at the rows of books that spread out around me. “I’m looking for someone to have recorded things about our ancestry, but maybe that’s not how I’m going to find answers for these kids. Someone screwed with their DNA to create new monsters. Maybe we need to study their DNA and that of every documented species. That might be the only way we find answers about what they are and what they’re capable of.”
“You’re assuming that everything Silence created in these kids had already existed at one time. What if that’s not the case? What if they’re just ‘flipping switches’ and seeing what happens?” he countered.
I frowned. “I have to think that there’s some actual intention behind it. We have eight Shadowkind.”
“Yes. But they are the only ones who have a like ‘sibling.’ right?”
Sighing in exasperation, I sighed. “Yes. But what does that mean? What is it about Shadow that they were trying to perfect? What did Shadow lack that maybe the youngest now possesses?”
“Maybe that’s not the question. What does Shadow possess that they were trying to get rid of?” Hawthorn suggested.
“I don’t like that question any more than the last.”
He laughed and pulled me to him. “I agree. Maybe we need to try both ways of finding answers. Study their DNA and keep looking in books. You know who might have some insight on where you could look?”
I shook my head.
“Toby and Aden. Toby’s entire career is studying ancient history. And Aden reads like he breathes.”
