The Nine Lives of Chloe King uncover that she is a descendant of an ancient race called the Mai. She discovers she has nine lives and is told by Jasmine and Alek that she alone can protect the race from human assassins, who have hunted them for thousands of years. The Mai are an ancient race of supernatural beings, the mortal descendants of the Ancient Egyptian cat goddess, Bastet. Chloe learns she is a member of them on her sixteenth birthday. The Mai once acted as defenders and companions of the human race, first as guardians for Egyptian pharaohs. Descendants of the Egyptian cat-goddess Bastet, the
Wadjet called the "Lady of Flame". She later became identified with the war goddess of Lower Egypt, Bastet, who acted as another figure symbolic of the nation, consequently becoming Wadjet-Bast. In this role, since Bastet was a lioness, Wadjet-Bastet was often depicted with a lioness head. After Lower Egypt had been conquered by Upper Egypt and they were unified, the lioness goddess of Upper Egypt, Sekhmet, was seen as the more powerful of the two warrior goddesses. It was Sekhmet who was seen as the "Avenger of Wrongs" and "the Scarlet Lady", a reference to blood, as the one with bloodlust.