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A gift from me to her.

Let her know that she has my blessing (not that she needs it) to love you the way you are meant to be loved.

The way I couldn’t.

Forever.

Forever yours,

Rachel

Chapter One

Kytten

January 2025, Las Vegas, Nevada.

The ringing of my phone woke me out of my sleep. Saving me from the nightmare that plagued me. Looking at the caller ID, I smiled. Peace settled over me immediately.

“Hey, Val.”

“Kytten, I need you to do something for me.”

“Sure, anything.”

There was nothing I wouldn’t do for her. Val had saved my life. I owed her a debt I could never repay. She’d found me on the streets when I was just eleven years old. Scared, hungry.

Alone.

I’d been wandering around for days, looking for my brother. He’d told me to stay put, and I tried. I really did.

In my defense, he’d left to get us food. But he never came back. He had been gone two days before I got up the nerve to go looking for him. Only I didn’t know where to look.

So I’d wandered around the streets of Vegas. Hiding in the shadows, crying for my brother. Eating out of garbage cans like a stray cat. It was why Val called me Kytten.

When Val found me, I had been curled up under a dumpster in an alley. Screaming my head off, terrified of the man trying to pull me out. Val rescued me.

Then she took me home with her.

I told her about my brother, and for years she helped me look for him. I never stopped looking for him. Val explained he might be gone. That the only reason he hadn’t come back was because something had happened to him.

That wasn’t the only reason people didn’t come back.

I knew the truth, though. With everything she was capable of—and she was fucking capable of a lot—she wasn’t Wonder Woman. Despite what I believed when I was a child.

Thorne was still out there, though.

Somewhere.

No one would convince me otherwise.

He was my twin brother, and twins had a connection no one could explain. Hell, I couldn’t explain it. But I knew if he was dead, I would feel it. I would die too.

I loved Val and the family she had created here at the Nyght Nymphs. But a chosen family couldn’t always replace blood. And Val wasn’t my blood. Thorne was, and I would never stop looking for him.

Despite believing he was gone, Val understood. She had a family she couldn’t be with. A daughter someone had stolen from her. Who now lived in hiding. Someone it wasn’t safe for her to be near. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have your child taken away from you and, once you found her, not be able to embrace her.

I wondered if my mother felt that way. Was she like Val? Did she leave us to keep us safe? Or did she just not want us? I absently scratched at my chest.