Claimed by Rebecca Zanetti

A DARING RESCUE

Emma Paulsen is a geneticist driven by science. But she’s also a psychic, so when a dark, good-hearted vampire frees her from the clutches of the evil Kurjans, she realizes he must be the man who’s been haunting her dreams. But with a virus threatening vampires’ mates, Emma may discover a whole new meaning of “lovesick”. . .

A DEADLY DECISION

As King of the Realm, Dage Kayrs has learned to practice diplomacy. Still, it’s taken three hundred years to find his mate, so he’ll stop at nothing to protect her—even if it means turning his back on his own kind…

 

Claimed (Dark Protectors, book two) by Rebecca Zanetti

Start date: September 15, 2021

End date: September 19, 2021

Rating: 2 ½ out of 5 stars

Trigger warning: intimate partner violence, child abuse

            I liked that this book had an actual plot unlike the last book in the series. Emma Paulsen and Cara Kayrs were captured by the Kurjans at the end of Fated. Cara is rescued, and then Emma is rescued offscreen. Claimed starts by showing what happened offscreen. Emma has been whisked off in a helicopter on her way to a Kurjan named Franco who wants to force her to be his mate. Dage teleports (because that’s a power that some vampires have in this series apparently) to Emma’s location and kills the Kurjans in the helicopter before teleporting again with Emma to an area not far from the helicopter crash site. From there, Emma is reunited with her sister and introduced to her new in-laws.

Emma and her younger sister Cara were physically and emotionally victimized as children by their alcoholic father. The ripples of this trauma can be seen in their current relationships. Cara is in an abusive relationship with Talen as I previously established in my review of Fated. Emma and Dage’s relationship is more than just unhealthy, it’s violent. This novel increases the abuse enough that I feel it’s necessary to explain bit-by-bit what makes these types of relationships harmful. Dage is physically violent, sexually violent, and psychologically aggressive towards Emma.

Physical violence includes, but is not limited to: scratching, pushing, shoving, throwing, grabbing, biting, choking, shaking, hair-pulling, slapping, punching, hitting, burning, use of a weapon (gun, knife, or other object), and use of restraints or one’s body, size, or strength against another person. (Breiding et al 11)

Pushing/shoving

He wouldn’t allow her to jerk free, just kept striding toward the building emerging into sight. “Let me go.”

He swung her around and pinned her against the rough wooden siding next to the door, once again blocking out the sun. “No.” A flash of fury broke through his stone façade to be quickly smoothed out. “You’re restricted to the family quarters.” (Zanetti 207)

Grabbing

She jerked her arm back. Unwise move. His hand tightened even further. “I strongly suggest you refrain from speaking until we reach privacy, love.”

“Let me go, damn it,” she hissed out of the corner of her mouth. (Zanetti 63)

Biting

“You’re my mate…I don’t need permission to taste you.” To prove his point, he kissed her neck, and slowly, so slowly sank those sharp points into her vein. (Zanetti 147)

Slapping

Flesh slapped against flesh…He’d branded her. On her upper right shoulder—for the world to see. (Zanetti 72-73)

She told herself she didn’t take orders from him. In truth, she balked. A cold slap of air pushed at her from behind, propelling her forward. Damn it. He controlled the air, too? (Zanetti 70)

Use of restraints or one’s body, size, or strength against another person

Strong arms flipped her over and she landed on her knees, pitching forward until he stabilized her with one hand curved over her shoulder, her wrists still bound against the small of her back. (Zanetti 226)

Strong arms grasped her hips and whirled her around, and she emitted a startled yelp. The king ducked. The world tilted as she was flung over his broad shoulder. (Zanetti 144)

            Most of these examples overlap with sexual violence in that Dage does them to coerce Emma into having sex with him. Next is psychological aggression, which includes (but is not limited to) expressive aggression, coercive control, threat of physical or sexual violence, and exploitation of victim’s vulnerability (Breiding et al 15).

Expressive aggression

His jaw could’ve been made from rock and his eyes from slate. “I strongly suggest you don’t mess with me.” (Zanetti 74)

He repeated her words without infliction, his face hardening to stone.

Dread pooled in her abdomen. His quiet calm was scaring the shit out of her. (Zanetti 205)

Coercive control

“He locked me inside here…I trusted Dage. I trusted him to understand my job and look what happened.” (Zanetti 212)

“I need to find out what’s happening at the lab, and no phones would call out from the hotel today. I don’t like being kept here like this.” (Zanetti 29)

Her wrist caught on the pillow. Or rather, the intricate golden cuff manacling her wrist caught on the pillow. Dage’s cuff. She frowned, trying to yank the ancient jewelry off. When the hell had he put this on her? (Zanetti 303)

Threat of physical or sexual violence

“Damn it, woman. Prepare yourself because your shields are about to be ripped to shreds…You have one day to lower them. This time tomorrow I invade.” (Zanetti 108-109)

Exploitation of victim’s vulnerability

Determination filled his eyes. “Is it about your childhood?”

She froze. “What do you know about that?” (Zanetti 92)

            I have issues with the explanation of vampire mating. Dage and Emma have a conversation where Emma asks if vampire mates are always human and Dage replies, “Well, non-vampire anyway. Vampires are male only” (Zanetti 11). (Don’t even get me started on how this perpetuates a heteronormative narrative.) On the following page, during the same conversation, Dage tells Emma, “Mates are enhanced humans. Psychics, healers, empaths—and you’re few and far between” (Zanetti 12). Conn Kayrs is mated to a witch; Caleb’s brother, another vampire, is mated to a shifter; and the prophet Lily Sotheby, who is implied to be a witch, was mated to a vampire. This proves that mates aren’t only enhanced humans like Dage implies in the latter part of their conversation. In Fated, the scarcity of psychic human women is given as the reason why some of the Sanguisuga, which is the name of the race of vampires Dage and his brothers belong to that isn’t even mentioned in this book, arrange mates in the same way some humans arrange marriages. If it’s possible to mate with other species (such as witch, shifter, demon), as seems to be the case, why are the Kurjans trying to take the Sanguisugas mates?

Vampire mating is completed by sexual intercourse and bite marks to signify a lifelong coupling, but the Kayrs family also brands their mates because sexism.

“You’d think through the hundreds of years the Kayrs family could’ve devised a way to mate without branding anyone.”

Moira shook her head. “Oh, Emma. They don’t want another way. They like the marking.” (Zanetti 200)

            The Kurjans are employing biological warfare to remove the physical mating mark and altered genes from mated psychic human women to free them to be mates for their race. Maggie, a shifter, was infected in Fated. Cara, Lily, and another shifter named Katie are infected in this book, leading everyone to suspect a mole within their group. Emma is a geneticist who “thought her lab had been working on a cure for cancer” when they were creating Virus-27, as Kane Kayrs coined it, and takes it upon herself to work on a cure to it (Zanetti 11).

            When a human mates with a vampire, their genes are altered, gaining an additional four pairs of chromosomes and immortality. The science in this series is chaotic, and this is coming from someone with only a passing knowledge of genetics. This virus attacks the twenty-seventh chromosome, which the vampires state is responsible for the pair bond in vampires’ mates and the ability to shapeshift into animals in shifters. Theoretically, it also turns shifters into werewolves—which are slaves to witches in this series—and it’s proposed that the Kurjans are attempting to make immortal slaves to fight their battle in the coming war against the Realm. So far, two shifters have been infected, Maggie and Katie, (why only female shifters?), but neither of them has yet turned into a werewolf at the full moon. The likelihood of the virus achieving this is up for debate until a shifter successfully turns into a werewolf.

I grant that, as a writer, you can make up whatever science you want to when you’re creating your own story, but the scientific explanations for everything are internally faulty. Take this explanation for different species with their sex-linked chromosomes.

“Vamps and Kurjans have an X chromosome and a Z chromosome and only pass on the Z. So, it combines with one of the X chromosomes passed on by a woman, and you end up with an XZ baby, or a vampire…Demons have a D chromosome. Demon females have a DX combination and males have a DY, similar to humans.” (Zanetti 180)

            Hold onto your hat because I made (very basic) Punnett squares.

Vampires have XZ chromosomes, and their mates have XX chromosomes because that is what female humans have. Fifty percent of the time, these couplings would produce offspring with XX (female human) and XZ (vampire). It’s stated that vampires can only pass on their Z chromosome, but that’s complete nonsense that has no basis in science that was clearly fabricated so their offspring could only be XZ. If Zanetti had thought it through, she could have had vampires have ZZ chromosomes where the Z is both a male indicator and a vampire indicator. Then their offspring with a female human would always be XZ, which could be a human-vampire hybrid that’s always male as the author seems to have intended.    

Now let’s talk about demons. Female demons have DX chromosomes, and male demons have DZ chromosomes. Demon offspring have a 25 percent chance of being DD (which is a demon without a X or Y chromosome—whatever that means), 25 percent chance of either being DX or DY (which is a female or male demon respectively), and 25 percent chance of being XY (which is a male human). In the above discussion, Kane goes on to state the rarity of female demons as such that “one in five hundred babies born to demons are female,” which is simply not true according to our math (Zanetti 180). Without knowing what the D chromosome does in a demon with a DD pairing, the odds of a demon being born male or female are the same. I hoped that Emma, who is a geneticist, would be more critical of the science as it’s explained to her, especially because she’s discussing this with fellow scientists, but she’s not.

Werewolves are usually killed by the Bane’s Counsel, and everyone is a mandatory reporter if they suspect someone has been made into a werewolf. The existence of Maggie has been kept secret from the Counsel per Dage’s orders. Under Jordan’s care, Maggie makes it through another full moon without turning into a werewolf. Now they’re waiting to see if she makes it through a third full moon. This gives hope to the shifters who have been infected that they won’t become werewolves after all. Jordan is the leader of the lion shifter pack, and he offers to mate with Katie to protect her after she loses her ability to shift when she’s infected with the virus. This upsets Katie because she’s been pining over the man for years and feels like he’s offering her a pity marriage. She makes Emma promise to help her run away if she’s unable to beat the virus to which Emma agrees reluctantly.

It’s discovered who the mole is, and he’s promptly killed by Dage, which may have not been the best idea because he was one of their spiritual leaders. Emma temporarily stops the progression of the virus in Cara after she’s infected with the virus catalyst by the mole. Conn’s mate, Moira, who lives in Ireland assists her via video call. The virus is explained to be partly magical in origin, which upsets Moira from a moral viewpoint. The witches are supposed to be on the side of the Sanguisugas, and that means that the witch who helped the Kurjans is a traitor. Regardless, Cara and her fetus are safe because of Emma and Moira. Emma and Dage get engaged, and Emma slowly comes to terms with becoming the Queen of the Realm.

            The real reason I picked up this book was to find out the conclusion to the subplot with Janie and Zane. Rest assured, there was no conclusion. Janie is Cara’s four going on five-year-old daughter from a previous relationship. Zane is an eleven-year-old boy with whom Janie has only met in her dreams. Janie prophesizes that she’ll need to help him win a war when they’re adults, and she knows that the outcome of the war rests solely on her shoulders. Big stuff for such a little girl. Kalin, the fifteen-year-old son of the Kurjan leader who Talen killed at the end of Fated, believes Janie is his mate. (He’s also a serial rapist and killer.) In this book, we finally see Janie and Kalin meet (in her dream world), and sparks fly in the worst way. Kalin implies Zane is hiding what he is and makes a creepy comment about Janie.

Kalin laughed, the low rumbling sound making birds take flight high above in a big flapping of wings. “Oh Janie. It’s going to be so difficult waiting until you’re of age.” (Zanetti 103)

            Here are my predictions. I hypothesize that if Zane is a type of creature that we’ve already been introduced to, he’s likely a demon. If Zanetti comes up with a new type of creature and then makes Zane whatever that is, I’ll be a little salty. I’m suspicious of the fact Zane always asks where Janie is, and it seems like everyone intentionally doesn’t tell her where they’re moving to. Perhaps this is because they worry someone will find out through her. In which case, I worry what would happen if Zane found out where in the world Janie was. The novel ends with Zane’s birthday gift to Janie, a horseshoe necklace, materializing in her bedroom after he seemed sad that she couldn’t take the gift home from their dream world. I wonder if the necklace contains a tracking device.

            I’ll leave on a more humorous note. I lost count of how many times nipples pebbled in this story and how many times characters said, “for the love of Pete.” So, for the love of Pete, leave the nipples alone in the next book.

 

Works Cited:

Breiding MJ, Basile KC, Smith SG, Black MC, Mahendra RR. Intimate Partner Violence Surveillance: Uniform Definitions and Recommended Data Elements, Version 2.0. Atlanta (GA): National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; 2015. https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/ipv/intimatepartnerviolence.pdf

Zanetti, Rebecca. Claimed. Brava, 2011.