Lahat ng Kabanata ng HIS TO CLAIM: Mated To My Cruel Stepbrother: Kabanata 1 - Kabanata 9

My phone buzzed against the nightstand for the third time in as many minutes, and I stared at the ceiling like it had personally offended me."That is the same number," Priya said from the other side of the room without looking up from her laptop. She had the particular gift of noticing everything while appearing to notice nothing. "You have been ignoring it for two days straight. Who is it?""My mother."The typing stopped.Priya swiveled her chair around and looked at me the way she always did when she was deciding whether to say the gentle thing or the honest thing. After three years of friendship, I knew she almost always chose honest. It was one of the reasons I loved her and one of the reasons she occasionally drove me up a wall."Nora—""She has been calling for three days," I said, sitting up and swinging my legs over the side of the bed. "Three days, Priya. Always the same message. She is changed, she is different, she wants us to reconnect, she misses me, she is sorry." I pi

I could not move.I stood in the middle of my mother's living room with my feet rooted to the floor and my mind completely blank, staring at Damien Hale standing at the bottom of the staircase as though the universe had not already exhausted its entire quota of cruelty on me before noon.He looked just as frozen as I felt. Just for a second. Just long enough for me to know that he had not known either — that whatever this was, it had blindsided us both in equal measure.My mother stepped forward with a warm, oblivious smile, gesturing between us with the easy confidence of a woman who believed she was about to do something lovely."Nora, this is Damien — my stepson." She rested her hand briefly on my arm. "And Damien, this is my daughter. I have told you so much about her."The silence that followed that introduction was the loudest I had ever stood inside.Damien said nothing. I said nothing. My mother looked between us with the beginning of a small, uncertain frown forming at the ed

I could not stop crying.That was the part that humiliated me most — not the firing, not the twenty-four hour deadline, not the image of Gerald Watts' cold, satisfied expression as I walked out of his office. It was the crying. I had spent years training myself out of it, years teaching myself that tears were something you saved for the truly private moments, and here I was, sitting on Priya's bed with my knees pulled to my chest and my face completely falling apart while she rubbed circles on my back and said nothing because there was nothing to say.Eventually she handed me a tissue and I pressed it against my eyes and breathed."We will figure this out," she said quietly. "I promise you, Nora — we will figure it out.""How?" I pulled the tissue away and looked at her, and I knew my face was a mess and I could not bring myself to care. "I have no savings, Priya. Every spare cent I have made for the past three years has gone toward paying off the debt I accumulated getting through sc

“Hmmm”, I moaned as the light ray from the sun slipped in through the window and hit my face brutally. I squeezed my face as I stood up and stretched lazily. “Oh my God! What time is it ?”, I screamed as I spranged up picking up my phone from the bedstand hurriedly. “Shit”, I muttered when I remembered I lost my job the day before and I’m now living with my mother’s husband and my supposed mate. Fuck Mr Gerald. I moved away from the bedstand and on my way to the bathroom to have my mouth rinsed, the same pain I had felt the day before came back and it felt like my heart was getting ripped out of my chest that moment. I grabbed my chest and held the chair in the room for immediate support so that I won’t fall. Before I opened my eyes earlier, I felt him and I knew he was awake already. Even though I haven’t set my eyes on him at all, I could still feel him like he was in the room with me and that made me tense. I continued my walk to the bathroom regardless and at that moment, I ma

Nora’s POV “Arrrrghhhh”, I screamed as I stared at a message popping up slightly on my phone. One of the freelancing firms I applied to just gave me a job. I screamed again, my grip tightening on my phone slightly as I jumped around my room happily. I was so filled with joy that I didn’t bother to open the documents attached to it to read the terms and conditions, I just clicked on the application immediately and I fell on my bed happily. “Finally, I have a job. I can leave this house in two months as I planned”, I muttered and picked up my phone again to stare at the email. “I’m grateful Lord”, I squealed happily and closed the email application so that I can call Priya to tell her the good news. I stomped my foot on the marbled floor repeatedly as the call tone rang repeatedly in my ears, “Hello Nora”, her tiny and calm voice said at the other end of the call when she finally picked after the third ring. “Heyyy… you should pick my call earlier next time or I will have to look for a