Page 20 of Dark Rover’s Luck (The Children Of The Gods #95)

20

KYRA

A s Kyra arrived at the clinic with Jasmine, she was surprised to see Fenella heading their way.

"Looks like we're not the only ones summoned." She nudged Jasmine and waved at Fenella, who quickened her pace when she saw them.

"You two got called in as well?" Fenella asked as she reached them.

Kyra nodded. "Any idea what this is about?"

Fenella shook her head. "Not a clue, and it's making me nervous. I keep thinking Bridget might have found something wrong with me, something bad that the fake Doomer doctor did to me."

Kyra's heart constricted as her own fear echoed Fenella's. She was very familiar with the lingering dread and the way it made her constantly brace for the next blow, the next revelation of damage.

"I doubt it's that," Jasmine said. "Otherwise, Bridget wouldn't have asked me to be here as well. I didn't suffer at the hands of that monster."

That made a lot of sense, but then Bridget could have thought that Kyra and Fenella would need emotional support, and that was why she'd included Jasmine in her summons.

Still, Fenella seemed to relax at this logic. "Good point."

"Only one way to find out." Kyra pushed open the clinic's door, and the three of them stepped into a bright waiting area.

Unlike most medical facilities, there was no receptionist gate-keeping access to the doctor. Instead, Bridget waved at them from a small office that was adjacent to the waiting room.

"Come on in, ladies," Bridget said, her slight Scottish accent lilting pleasantly. "Please, have a seat," she gestured at the chairs on the other side of her desk.

It was a bit crowded for the three of them in the tight space, but they weren't strangers, and rubbing elbows and thighs wasn't a problem.

"What's this about, doctor?" Kyra asked.

Bridget folded her hands in front of her. "As part of our standard protocol, we run genetic screenings on all new arrivals to the village. It helps us track family connections, the matrilineal being of utmost importance because of the taboo of inter-mating within the same maternal line."

Kyra's stomach twisted. "I hope we don't share a line with the Clan Mother."

If that was the case, she couldn't be with Max, and Fenella couldn't be with Din. Jasmine was probably fine with Ell-rom because he came from a different maternal line, and that was a relief.

"You don't," Bridget said. "But that was only one of the concerns behind the testing, and not just because of the need to eliminate the possibility that new members are genetically connected to the Clan Mother through some ancient ancestor. So far, we haven't had incidents like that, and frankly I don't anticipate them, but there is always a slight possibility of a lost member producing offspring. The other consideration is that, sometimes, people who join us discover that they are distant relatives of existing members."

Kyra let out a breath. "You had me worried for a moment there. If I were from the same maternal line as the Clan Mother, my relationship with Max would have been considered taboo."

"I can imagine." Bridget smiled reassuringly. "Perhaps I should have opened with that to save you the scare. Anyway, the reason I asked all three of you to meet me together is that something unexpected came up when I ran the tests on Fenella's samples. I repeated the analysis to be certain, and then I pulled samples we had on file for Kyra and Jasmine to compare." She paused, looking at each of them in turn, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. "The results are quite definitive. You three are related."

A stunned silence fell over them.

"Are you serious?" Fenella was the first to speak. "How is that even possible?"

Kyra wanted to know that as well. Fenella was from Scotland, and she was from Iran. She doubted that any of her ancestors had ever been to Scotland, let alone come from there. But then she didn't know much about her family and where they'd hailed from. Her sisters should know more, though, and she planned on asking them later.

Bridget tapped on her tablet, bringing up a series of diagrams. "It's a maternal connection. Let me explain the testing process so you understand what we're looking at."

She turned the tablet so they could all see the screen. "There are several ways we can analyze genetic relationships. Autosomal DNA tests can trace relationships back five to six generations on both sides of a family, but they have limitations. The random nature of DNA inheritance means that after about ten generations, only a small fraction of ancestors contribute directly to one's DNA, making precise relationship determinations difficult for distant relatives."

"But you sound quite certain about our connection," Kyra said.

"That's because I didn't just run autosomal tests," Bridget explained. "I also analyzed your mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA. This is a special type of DNA that's passed only from mother to child, and only daughters can pass it on to their own children. It creates an unbroken matrilineal chain—from mother to daughter to granddaughter, and so on."

Fenella frowned. "I don't understand. My mother was Scottish. Kyra's family is Iranian. How could we possibly share matrilineal DNA?"

"That's the fascinating part," Bridget said, her eyes bright with excitement. "Mitochondrial DNA is remarkably stable over time. A person's mtDNA is likely to be identical to that of their direct maternal ancestor from many generations ago. Mutations are very rare, which is why mtDNA testing can trace matrilineal ancestry back thousands of years."

"So, you're saying we share a common female ancestor who could have lived hundreds of years ago?" Jasmine said.

Bridget nodded. "Based on the specific markers and haplogroup designation in your mtDNA, your shared maternal ancestor likely lived in what is now northern Iran or the Caucasus region, possibly around 700 to 800 years ago."

Kyra felt a strange tingling sensation, starting at the base of her neck and spreading through her body. Her family was growing, and the thought was overwhelming.

From a lone wolf, so to speak, to a clan of her own.

That was a fortune beyond measure.

"But how did my ancestor end up in Scotland?" Fenella asked, her voice uncharacteristically small.

"Human migration patterns are complex," Bridget said. "Trade routes, invasions, slavery, displacements—people have been moving across continents for millennia. The Mongol conquests, the Silk Road, later migrations to Europe—there are countless ways your maternal ancestor could have traveled from the Caucasus to Scotland."

Kyra was struggling to process the information. "So, Fenella is what—my distant cousin?"

"You are very distant cousins through your maternal lines," Bridget confirmed. "The exact degree of cousinship is difficult to determine without more genealogical information, but based on the mtDNA patterns, I'd estimate your common ancestor lived approximately twenty-five to thirty generations ago."

"That's incredible," Jasmine breathed. She turned to Fenella with a look of wonder. "No wonder we felt such a strong sense of connection when we met. Family recognizing family on some instinctual level."

Fenella seemed frozen in place, her expression a mix of disbelief, hope, and vulnerability that Kyra had never seen on her face before. "That's unbelievable," she finally said. "How reliable are the results of those tests?"

"The mtDNA match is definitive," Bridget said. "You three share a direct maternal ancestor."

Kyra watched as Fenella's carefully maintained composure began to crumble. Her lower lip trembled, and her eyes grew bright with unshed tears.

"That's incredible. After I turned immortal and was forced to leave my parents' home, I thought that I would never have a family I could actually interact with." Fenella wiped her eyes. "I couldn't let them see that I wasn't aging."

Kyra knew how it felt to discover that you were not alone in the world, and the emotion in Fenella's voice struck a chord. She reached over Jasmine's lap to take Fenella's hand. "You're part of our family now, and you are welcomed with love."

"Our family just keeps growing." Jasmine placed her hand over theirs. "First, I found Mom, then she found her sisters and nieces and nephews, and now we've found you."

A tear slipped down Fenella's cheek, followed by another. She made no move to wipe them away, staring at their joined hands as if they were something precious and fragile.

"I thought I would ask my sisters if anyone in our family history came from Scotland," Kyra said. "But given that our shared ancestress lived twenty-five generations ago, that's irrelevant."

"Your common ancestor was almost certainly from the Caucasus region," Bridget said. "Her descendants might have moved slowly westward over the generations."

"Still, it's quite amazing to think about," Jasmine said. "This woman who lived centuries ago, who probably never traveled more than a few miles from her home in her lifetime, has descendants scattered across the globe who've somehow found each other."

Fenella snorted. "The bloody universe does have a sense of humor after all. I've been running from place to place, never putting down roots anywhere, and it turns out I had family halfway across the globe."

"No wonder I was obsessed with freeing you," Kyra said. "My rebel friends thought that I was crazy for risking my life that way for a stranger."

Jasmine frowned. "Based on that logic, you should have felt something about the girls who were imprisoned in the same facility."

"They must have been brought in after I was captured." Kyra closed her hand over her pendant. "I was constantly drugged, and he took my pendant. I had no conduit for my intuition."

"Blood calls to blood," Bridget said. "I know this sounds very unscientific, but there's more to familial connections than we can explain with science alone."