Sera's POV

When I entered the ballroom, I gasped with amazement. The ballroom was humongous, the size of a cave, and it was artfully decorated with twinkling lights and white flowers of all kinds.

There were a lot of werewolves dressed in the most recent designer clothing, and most of them held tiny glasses of champagne. Suited waiters were walking around, offering little canapés.

"I could probably eat like ten of those in a second," I whispered into Derek's ear. He grinned at me and pointed towards a table.

"Your mate's there," he gestured towards a seat at the table. "When you walk down with me, try to look into his eyes."

"You're good at this," I teased him.

"No, Liam made me study while he was doing your hair," he looked peeved.

I strutted down the stairs with Derek and the whole ballroom went silent as they looked up at us. I could feel girls staring down at my dress, judging me, but I could also feel men who were appraising me in a way that made me uncomfortable.

Derek clutched me closer as we went down, and I was thankful for that because if he hadn't held onto me, I would've fallen and embarrassed myself.

"Do I have lipstick in my teeth?" I asked Derek when he looked down at me.

"No angel," Derek smirked. "I can smear your lipstick though, if you want." His smirk showed me that he would kiss me if I had consented, and I quickly shook my head. He would be murdered by Nate if he even got close to my face.

I smiled at Nate when he made eye contact with me, and celebrated inside when I saw that his mouth was gaping open. I waved flirtatiously at him and kissed Derek's cheek as he was looking at me intently. I could see that he was struggling to control himself, and was happy that Liam's plan had worked.

Derek pulled my chair out for me and pushed it in after I had sat on it. He then proceeded to sit down on the chair next to mine and hold my hand when we were comfortable. I could see Nate glaring at him in my peripheral vision, but ignored it as the waiters came and asked us all what we wanted to have.

"Chicken, steak, seafood, or vegetarian?" a cute waiter kneeled down next to me. His hair was ginger, and I could tell he was Irish by his facial features and by his surprisingly sexy accent. Personally, I preferred Nate's deep voice which had a little bit of a British accent in it, but I didn't really care at this point. I somehow knew that he was attracted to me by the way he looked at me. It seemed that Nate had noticed too, and he let out a low growl when he saw the waiter's eyes stray down to my cleavage.

"Chicken," I beamed up at him. He quickly wrote it down and grinned at me before he walked away.

After a few seconds of awkward silence, I heard Nate's beta, whose name I had remembered as Jason, clear his throat and open his mouth.

"So... do you know what warrior you're sponsoring?" Jason said. I'm pretty sure he just chose the first words that came to his head. I looked at him confusingly, I didn't know what he went by that.

"This ball," Nate spat out while glaring at Derek. "Is for packs to find new warriors. They present many warriors that went to their training school for us, and we bid and pick out who we want to sponsor."

"What does it mean to sponsor one?" I looked up at Derek.

"It means that we train them, house them, et cetera, and in return they'll join our pack and fight for us," Derek glared back at Nate as he explained.

"Oh," once I said that word, there was nothing to talk about, so everyone just stared at each other. Nate stared at Derek angrily, Jason looked towards the pair with amusement, and the other men who were sitting there, presumably Nate's gamma and delta, just tried to focus on something else.

Everyone at the table stood up as I pushed out of my seat. "I'm just going to go to the ladies' room."

"I'll come," Derek said.

"It's a bathroom," I paused for a moment. "For women, and last time I checked, you're a man."

"Okay angel," Derek blushed and everyone at the table sat down, except for Nate. I walked away from the table, going towards a hallway which I thought had a bathroom down it. But before I could walk further down, someone grabbed my arm and yanked me into a closet on the side.

"What the-" the mysterious person cut me off.

"What in the hell are you doing strutting around, especially with that mutt?!" Nate's angry eyes met mine as he clutched me to his chest as close as possible.

My mate was angry.

Very angry.

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Author's Note

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