Maya Delaney

 Maya Delaney Full Name Maya Delaney Nickname Maya Papaya Alias None Status Alive Race Skinwalker Age 16  Birthday Unknown Hair Color Black Eye Color Brown Origin Portland, Oregon Occupation Student Family Daniel Bianchi (Boyfriend) Calvin Antone (Father) Rick Delaney (Adoptive Father) Mrs. Delaney (Adoptive Mother) Ashton Gray (Brother) (Grandmother)  First Appearance                             The Gathering Mentioned in Atoning Narrates The New Guy Maya is a sixteen-year old girl who lives in Salmon Creek. Maya moved to Salmon Creek from Oregon, when she was five. She is the main protagonist. Maya is a Native American with black hair, she's 5'5". She has very little knowledge of her origins because she was adopted when she was young and has no interest in finding her biological mother seeing as she lost her chance to be a mom years ago, and she loves her adoptive parents. She has a birthmark in the shape of a paw on her hip. Her father is the warden of Salmon Creek Park. Maya has a love of animals and possesses great skill at nursing them back to health. She does this with the injured animals her father finds in the park, only taking them to the vet when it is absolutely necessary. Due to Maya's love of all animals, great and small, her parents bought her a pet German Shepard  named Kenjii in order to help protect her from wild predators. It appears that the animals love Maya as much as she loves them. Wildlife, primarily cougars seemed to be particularly attracted to her. This affinity is later implied to be due to the fact that Maya is  a Skin-walker, a supernatural species of the Navajo. a fact that she discovers through Rafe, a boy she dates who she later finds out was actually searching for her because he knew this and he hoped that she would be able to help him. He reveals that the Skinwalkers as a supernatural species died out, but through the Phoenix Project; an experiment by The Edison Group, and funded by the St. Clouds, latent genes were activated in women causing their children to once more become Skinwalkers. However this really worries both Maya and Rafe as his sister changed as a person when she started Shifting forms, to the point where she is now more animal than human.

Maya initially has very little knowledge of her origins due to the fact that she was adopted when she was very young. She doesn't want find her biological mother because she thinks the woman lost the chance to be her mom years ago, when she abandons her. She later finds out, from Rafe, that her mother gave her up to protect her from The Edison Group and the St. Clouds, and she is astonished to find out that she also has a twin brother.

Besides Serena, who dies in the prologue of the book, the only person Maya regards as a true friend is Daniel, the boy who used to be Serena's boyfriend (the three of them had been best friends). With Daniel and the few other teens their age, she attends Salmon Creek High, a very expensive and up to date school, which is of course funded by the St. Cloud Corporation. She has a birthmark of a paw on her hip which she desires to get tattooed to keep it from fading, an idea which her mother gets her father to agree to, until the tattooist's Aunt Jean calls her a "yee naaldlooshii", a witch, something her mother takes great offense to. They later find out that she was in fact calling her a Skin-walker. However, she begins shifting in The Calling. She also meets her biological father, Calvin Antone, a Nast employee who tries to capture her and her friends. In The Rising, Maya meets her twin brother, Ash, who, though they get off to a rough start, they start to grow closer as brother and sister by the end of the book. In The Rising, she begins to show signs of regressing, like Annie, only instead she becomes angry for no reason and begins acting more like a predator. She and Rafe end up breaking up in the book as she realizes she is truly in love with Daniel, as they finally kiss and start dating in the epilogue. Maya is now on good terms with Rafe as friends, and is also good friends with Derek and Chloe.