Limit home post to 10 without creating pagination?

If you want to prevent the API from generating pagination links, you can use the found_posts filter to make WordPress think there are never more than 10 posts returned from the current query.

add_filter( 'found_posts', 'wpd_disable_home_pagination', 10, 2 );
function wpd_disable_home_pagination( $found_posts, $query ) {
    if ( !is_admin() && $query->is_home() && $query->is_main_query() && $found_posts > 10 ) {
        return 10;
    }
    return $found_posts;
}

EDIT-

You could redirect any paginated URL:

add_action( 'pre_get_posts', 'wpd_redirect_pagination_urls', 10, 2 );
function wpd_redirect_pagination_urls( $query ) {
    if ( !is_admin() && $query->is_home() && $query->is_main_query() && $query->is_paged() ) {
        wp_redirect( get_post_type_archive_link( 'post' ) );
        exit;
    }
}