Page 34 of Phantom’s Mate

Nick saw flashes of light around the edges of Britt’s memory, and felt her emotions spike. I’m going to die again!

Nick instinctively pulled at the pain, taking it into himself. You’re okay, he whispered. I’m here. Britt relaxed, and the light receded.

Brock said softly: The letter. Who is it for?

Nick could feel Britt’s resistance, feel her straining. Relax, he whispered. You’re safe.

I wrote it a few days ago, Britt repeated. To send to her. Because I wanted her to have the locket, so she’d feel like part of the family.

Brock: Who? Who were you giving the locket to?

Britt said softly, My sister.

There was a feeling of completion, a vibration like a deep chime—and Nick was back in his body. He opened his eyes. Britt was still sitting there, eyes closed and brow furrowed, but Brock had removed his hands.

“That was a breakthrough,” he said, though he looked troubled. “It seems like her unfinished business has to do with reconnecting with her sister.”

Nick shook his head. He and Britt had talked a lot over the last couple of days, including more about their families.

“There’s only one problem with that,” he said. “She doesn’t have a sister.”

Chapter 16

Britt opened her eyes, shining with hope and wonder. “I do, though,” she said. “I do have a sister!”

Nick gaped at her. “Since when?”

She turned to him excitedly. “That’s what the accident blocked out! I told you my mom left me when I was five, and I was in foster care before my gramma and gramps found me and adopted me.”

He nodded. “You said your mother dropped out of sight.”

“Right. But a couple of months ago, I was contacted by a lawyer who said my mom had died. And that in her papers, a birth certificate had been found for another child. A girl, six years younger than me. Nothing about who she was, or where. So I decided to use my mad research skillz for good, and went looking for her.”

“And you found her,” Nick said.

“Yes! Not far from here, actually, in Louisville.” She dropped her eyes. “I didn’t tell anyone I was even looking. I didn’t want to get my cousins’ hopes up before I knew if I could find her, or if she’d want anything to do with us.”

“So what did she say when you contacted her?”

Brittany shook her head. “That letter was supposed to be my first contact. See, my mother did the same thing to her she did to me. Got tired of being a mom, I guess, or started doing drugs again, and left her in foster care. Only, nobody got her out. I don’t think she ever even knew she had other family.”

Her eyes filled with tears, and Nick took her hand.

“I just—I wanted to contact her, but not drop on her out of the blue, you know? She’s married now, so she has someone, but I wanted her to have something special from her birth family. That’s why I was giving her the locket, so she’d feel like she belonged. If she called me, I was going to ask her—ask them—if they wanted to come and have Thanksgiving with me and the cousins.”

Nick looked around the room. Everyone had gone quiet, all jokes silenced. He knew that family was important to all of them—for Brandon and Kitty and the twins, it was the Bad Blood Crew, the crew they’d grown up in, as well as the new family they’d created here with their mates.

For Titan and Mari, Damien and Lila, it was a new place to belong, after all the losses they’d had in their lives.

Family was everything.

“I wanted so much to connect with her,” she said. “It was all I could think about. I can’t believe the accident made me forget.”

Titan said, “That would be something important enough—and frustrating enough—to keep you from crossing over if it hadn’t been accomplished.”

“Then we have to accomplish it,” Nick said. “Do you remember her address? Or her name?”

“Of course! I—” She frowned, then pounded her thigh in frustration. “No. I don’t. How could I forget that?”