Claimed And Marked By Her Stepbrother Mates - Chapter 455

Chapter 455: 455-His Missing Love
Helanie:

“Who gave you that flower?” I watched him hold the little blue flower tightly and listened to me ask him a question.

“Emmet! I want you to be honest with me. Do you love someone? I mean—has there been someone else before—” I bit my tongue when I couldn’t bring myself to ask if he even loved me.

With a very gentle nod, he confirmed it.

“There was someone. Someone whose departure made me the way I am,” he said, referring to his addiction to alcohol.

“Oh! Do you still love her?” I questioned.

“Helanie! She is… dead. Her love will always be in my heart. I hope you won’t have a problem with it. I will never mention her in front of you,” he held my hand and spoke lovingly.

“I understand,” I replied with a smile. It made me feel so alive that the man before me was so wonderful—he knew the difference between past and present instead of disrespecting past relationships.

Things didn’t go well between them because she passed away, which explains why she will always be a part of him.

“Well, I was meaning to show you something. Remember when Glimard took you away? We found you in front of the cave, and that’s when I also found this inside the cave,” I pulled the pink bracelet out and held it up for him.

However, his face changed the minute he saw it.

“You found it in the cave?” he asked, holding it and staring at it. There was a weird look on his face that made me understand that he knew who it belonged to.

“Yeah, the cave those things were taking you to, Emmet!” I felt so lost watching him examine it.

“What is going on? Do you know this bracelet? Have you seen it before?” I started bombarding him with questions. He was just staring at it in silence before he shook his head and looked at me.

“Umm, it belonged to her,” he said, making my body flinch.

“Who? Your—” I paused when he added himself.

“Azura! She used to wear it all the time,” he frowned, looking around as if he was searching for answers on the ground.

“Oh! That is odd. I heard those things are summoned to take something or someone to their master—whoever summons them,” I recalled, watching him look up from the bracelet at me.

“Helanie, if I ever forget you, you will move on. You will not ruin your life coming after me,” as soon as that slipped from his mouth, my muscles tensed up.

“That is not possible. Would you do the same if I forgot about you?” I asked, watching him sigh.

“I would want you to move on and be happy,” he added, this time more firmly.

“Would you do that?” I repeated my question, annoyed that he thought that was an option.

“Tell me,” as I put pressure on him, he finally spoke up, and what he said wasn’t really what I wanted to hear.

“I will move on. I moved on from Azura too, didn’t I?”

I stepped back from him and glared at his face.

“If this is your way of making me move on, then you are wrong. And very rude,” I stomped my foot, angry that he had just told me a few minutes ago that he would never bring her up—yet he did. And just because he had moved on from her, he thought it would be possible to move on from me too.

However, he was lying. He hadn’t moved on from her.

I turned around to leave, but he grabbed my hand, pulling me back.

“I just want you to be happy. You have been through a lot,” he continued, wrapping his legs around my lower body when I tried to get away from him. He was still leaning back, making me lean over his body.

“Let me go. I don’t even want to see your face right now,” I lost it with him. Everything was going so well, but his one comment deeply upset me.

“Hey, I only said it so that you’d move on,” he cupped my face, but I turned it to the side, refusing to look at him.

“Helanie, fine!” he scoffed. “I think I love you more than I ever loved her.”

This was the first time he confessed.

My heart sank in my chest, and my face turned to him, my eyes wide open.

His confession of love threw me off guard. I didn’t even expect him to say that, but he didn’t stop there.

“I was shocked myself when I started falling for you. For a very long time, I convinced myself that I would see you as my stepsister, but this feeling of wanting you only grew. It was the way you talked and the way you didn’t. The way you walked and the way you stopped. How you got angry and how you smiled. Everything about you made me go crazy. I couldn’t help but love you more and more every day. It felt like a taboo because not only were you my stepsister, but my brother’s mate too. Two of my brothers were fighting over you, and here I was, falling for you. And then I realized I was losing my memory. Helanie, I felt like I had been punished. The Moon Goddess showed me she could give me someone better than Azura—and take her away from me at the same time.”

I let him speak, his words ringing through my heart like the strings of a guitar.

“I love you,” he confessed again. This time, his hands rested on my back, just above my bra strap, holding me like his most prized possession.

“What does a man have to do to make his lover say something sweet in return?” he complained, and I finally cracked a smile.

“A lover?” It was about time. “Emmet! We are mates.”

I watched his forehead crease slightly in a frown.

“The first night in your mansion, I felt a mate bond with you in the passage.”