Chapter 10

Claudia's POV I peeked over at Isaac only to run right into his eyes and after a few seconds of staring at him, I read his thoughts. A huge shock took over my mind. How was this possible? I was so shocked by what I read that my fingertips trembled. Someone beside me was calling my name and telling me to get my ass to the back kitchen, but I was frozen in place as if I had been struck by lightning. No matter how loudly they called me, I was still caught up in the emotion of surprise, until one of the maids forcefully dragged me to the back kitchen. "What were you doing standing there?" The maid scolded me, "Do you think you're the focus of the banquet, staying still in the doorway and not moving?" She pushed me to the sink and the cold water soaked into my skirt before I slowly eased back from the shock. I picked up the dishes and scrubbed them numbly, the word "mate" running all over my mind. "She's my mate!" I looked into Isaac's eyes and read his mind. I was actually Isaac's mate! No, no, no, Isaac was actually my mate. Fiona would definitely kill me if she found out about this. But Isaac would come to rescue me, right? Because I was his mate. Mate, mate...I kept chewing on that word. Would that proud son of an Alpha be with me? My mind was rambling, completely lost in normal logic. Isaac's POV My wolf blood was fully aroused at this moment, and I could sense everything around me. And my mate was not far from me, Caesar could smell clearly where she was. A feeling of pleasure filled my heart that I had finally found my mate. Before, I had wondered why that particular girl always caught my attention and that Caesar had a strong liking for her. Especially after seeing her beautiful green eyes, I had speculated if she could be my mate. "I can't believe she's my mate!" I shouted in my mind. There was still a slight shock in my heart at the confirmation of the conjecture. But there was also a sweet sense of joy spreading through it. Caesar expressed his excitement as he tried to fight for control of my body and pounced on Claudia's side immediately. "Calm down!" I ordered Caesar. Gosh, I finally found my mate and she was right by my side the whole time. "Isaac, what are you gawking at? Come dance with me, will you?" Fiona's voice woke me up. I looked at her with a grim gaze. "Can't you hear me telling you to get the hell away from me?" I shrugged off Fiona's hand on my arm, ignoring her shouting behind my back. Thanks to Fiona for calming me down, there was no way that Claudia and I were going to be together. The rest of the time at the banquet, I was thinking about her in my mind. As for what other people said or did, I couldn't pay a bit of attention to it. After the party, my mother asked me with great concern, "You don't seem to be concentrating. What happened? Have you found your mate?" I opened my mouth and swallowed back the words that had come to my lips. Mother would never want me to be mated to a slave or the daughter of a traitor. If the rest of the pack found out Claudia was my mate. Jesus. I couldn't even imagine that image. I would be laughed at by everyone. And my father would have looked at me with disdain and inherited the Alpha position to my brother Neil. Most importantly, my mother would kill Claudia if she knew. As I remembered, she would never allow me to do anything that would go against the "future Alpha". Knowing that my mate was only a lowly slave, she would have gotten rid of Claudia and found me a woman to marry who would secure the pack's rule. So I had to hide it from my mother and tell her that I hadn't found my mate yet. The loss on my mother's face was obvious and she reminded me before she left, "You know how important Luna is to the pack, so your mate must be helpful to you in becoming an Alpha." With that, my mother left in a hurry, and I could only watch her back and leave in silence. Unlike my father, my mother did not show any obvious dislike of me. But she was always cold, and her concern for me was limited to the "heir to the Alpha" aspect. I wanted my mother to hug me like other children who were pampered in their mothers arms. But what I got was words like "You're going to be an Alpha, don't act so weak."as the answer. Today's banquet was also like that. My mother had brought ladies of high status from all the wolf packs. She just wanted my mate to be worthy of the future Alpha, but never thought that my mate should be someone I truly love. After my mother left, I thought about it alone in the bathroom for a long time. Thinking about my future, the rigorous training I had received since I was a child and thinking about my mother and father's reprimand. Mostly, I thought about how I was going to face my mate. Confusion and hopelessness made my heart bitter. I looked at myself in the mirror and questioned why I was living like a loser, then slammed my fist into the mirror. "Bang!" The mirror exploded apart at once, leaving a drop of blood around the edge of the already shattered mirror. Claudia's POV When I finished washing the dishes, it was already dawning. The cold water soaked my hands for so long that the bones in my fingers began to tingle. My entire arms were too fatigued to be able to lift them from the mechanical motions I had repeated all night. Exhaustion surrounded me, leaving me with little energy to think about the farce that had taken place at the banquet last night as well as my mate. As I dragged my tired body back to the basement, I saw someone in the doorway who had never been there before. Isaac was leaning against the doorway of my room waiting for me. My heart began to pound violently when he approached me. He slowly walked towards me and my face started to burn out of my control. But at that moment, I should have been able to see the grim expression on Isaac's face if I hadn't been overwhelmed with a great sense of joy. "Do you really think that a slave like you would be my mate?" Isaac's tone was full of disdain and boredom. "Don't even think about what you can't get."