Claimed And Marked By Her Stepbrother Mates-Chapter 681-His Name

Helanie:

"Emmet, it only makes him more suspicious in my eyes," I whispered to Emmet while Altan was crying by the tree.

"What are you thinking? Walk me through it," Emmet turned to me, gently pinching my chin between his fingers as he asked.

He had a way of speaking, and sometimes, he would touch me so gently just to show I had his attention. But after doing that, he would expect me not to get swayed, even for a brief moment.

I shyly held myself together and responded, "What if Altan is really behind all this? He misses his brother, so he’s abducting these children. And then he leaves the soil from his backyard in his victim’s bed?" I whispered, or so I thought.

Altan heard me and got up from the ground to respond. He turned to us with his eyes swollen. He looked like a mess. The fact that Diaz brought his son’s body to his backyard was wild.

"But I’m really innocent. I don’t know how the soil from my backyard is appearing in the beds, but I’m not doing anything," he said, with fresh tears still in his eyes.

"Did anything happen recently that made you think of your twin?" Emmet continued to ask him, while I wasn’t sure if he could be trusted.

Altan stared at Emmet but looked lost. Then, he began to nod repeatedly.

"Yeah, recently I’ve been having blackouts. And during those blackouts, all I think about is my last hour—my last moments—with my brother."

"What kind of blackouts? What was your last time together?" Emmet asked curiously.

As we stood talking next to the tree, the wind began blowing through its branches. Oddly, it was just that tree, not the whole garden, showing signs of wind.

We all stopped talking and looked around, checking the weather. There was no storm setting in. It was just that tree. Then it started to shake, as if someone were holding onto it and shaking it, not like a natural gust.

"Okay, I see what’s going on," Emmet said, while Altan turned to face the tree.

"Is it you, brother?" Altan asked, his voice full of sadness, but also happiness.

I had no clue what was going on. I turned to look at Emmet and found him staring intensely at the tree.

"What’s going on?" I slipped closer to Emmet, gently shaking his arm. He quickly held my hand between his own for comfort.

"I think I understand what’s happening. But there are still missing pieces, and they’re making all of this very confusing," Emmet uttered, his eyes fixed on the tree, watching Altan yell and cry for his brother to show up.

"Please, brother—show me your face. Talk to me, what are you trying to say?" Altan let out another cry before Emmet gently pushed me behind his back and walked toward Altan.

"Ask him if he is behind all these abductions," Emmet said, and Altan nodded.

"Are you—are you behind the abductions? Are you taking the kids of our pack with you?" he asked, and the tree started shaking even more violently. It felt like something straight out of a horror movie.

"But why?" Altan questioned, and the tree suddenly went still. No movement at all.

"What just happened? Did he leave, or what?" I had no clue what I was asking. How could he just leave?

"Okay, so one thing is for sure, whatever this is, it’s for Altan," Emmet said, gently patting Altan’s back as he dropped to his knees and started crying.

"I should have known he would come back to haunt us all," Altan whispered, breaking down as he began to speak from the heart.

"What do you mean by that? Why would he come to haunt you? It’s not like you killed him," Emmet said, his tone sharper now, asking pointed questions. But I think Altan wanted to speak. He seemed almost too anxious to tell us what he knew.

"We didn’t kill him, that’s true. But we never gave him a proper burial either. My father dug a grave by himself and threw his body in there. There was no prayer. No pack funeral for him. Father didn’t want to acknowledge that it had seriously happened. For his own mental peace, he damned my brother to eternal pain and loneliness."

It all made sense. As Altan explained what happened with his brother, I remembered there had been no funeral. It was as if one minute he was here, and the next—gone. They had wiped his name from everywhere. Nobody was allowed to speak of him, to even gossip. And so, everyone simply forgot.

No prayers. No blessings. And to think his body decomposed in the backyard, the backyard they never visited anymore, was painfully cruel.

Now I remembered why Diaz made that rule about the backyard never being used. He wanted to normalize it. He wanted everyone to think it wasn’t just his backyard that was off-limits.

"But if it’s Daltan, why would the DNA results show such an exact match with you?" I asked Altan. He suddenly went silent. Not because he was hiding something, it seemed like he was genuinely trying to understand it himself.

"It is definitely Daltan, but how could he alter the tests?" Emmet asked. That’s when Altan stood up and straightened his body. His arms hung lifeless by his sides, and he stretched his neck back, staring at the sky for a long moment.

We knew he was about to hit us with something big, something that would change everything.

"I know exactly how," Altan sighed, slapping his forehead before breaking down again, this time even louder.

"We fucking took everything from him," he wailed.

"Altan, what did you take from him?" I asked, my heartbeat slowing. Emmet quickly wrapped his arm around my back and comforted me. Even when it wasn’t about me, when I didn’t need comforting, Emmet still cared.

And then, in a slow and composed tone, Altan told us the secret none of us had considered in so long,

"His name. His identity."

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