Alpha Ren ✔️

Chapter Eleven

Word Count: 1632

~Brielle

I have no idea how to react.

This isn't my Alpha. This isn't Ren. His gaze is too sharp, his expression too sinister. I can't escape his grip until mercilessly, he pushes away, giving me space to breathe and think through what is happening. Something is up with Ren, whether it's a night terror or another unexplainable

Recovering myself, I pretend I didn't hear him claim I belong to him. "I'm going to get back and leave you to it."

For once, Ren doesn't look as if he wants to stop me. I watch him carefully, waiting for him to say anymore and intervene. When he doesn't I smile at him tightly, trying not to seem as suspicious as I am. He watches me with a pointed gaze as I pass him, quickening my steps until he's not in my line of sight.

Once I know he's not following me, I rush back to the servants quarters. No one seems bothered that I'm at all flustered. Everyone has been all over the place considering ever since the Alpha's have arrived, not a single person hasn't been busy.

Most were sleeping when I collapsed into my bed.

My mind is racing, sifting through the conversation I just had with Ren. He didn't recognize me, which might be pretentious of me, but after the previous conversations and situations we have been in together, I would assume he still knows me. Either it was a night terror, or maybe added stress from the Alpha's visiting.

I hear Mabel stir from behind me. "Here I was thinking you would be out all night catering to those Alpha's."

Turning over on my side, I look at her. Knowing her reasons for coming to this island in the first place, I ensured she wouldn't be on task to enter the Alpha's rooms when they needed her. I can't be sure she wouldn't do something to ruin Ren's event.

"Something weird happened."

At the mention of this, Mabel immediately sits up, light from the small gas lamp slung up on the corner of the room setting a frightful glow across her features. Any gossip, in her realm, is gossip she has to be in on. As much as I would rather figure this out on my own, Mabel has been here longer, and knows substantially more than I do.

"I ran into Ren in the hallway a few minutes ago. Something about him was different," I tell her, grasping on to each word, each look, each expression. "He didn't remember my name, and he looked different...spoke different."

Mabel frowns. "How so?"

"His voice was deeper, his eyes brighter. The way he talked to me was off, as if he was under some kind of spell," I admit to her. "He even pinned me against the wall in some kind of...primal way."

Mabel's eyes are alight with excitement. "This is what I've been telling you. What I've been telling everyone. He's not normal."

"I don't think this is much of a case of the transforming demon you tell tales about to scare the other girls. It was still Ren," I tell her firmly, not ready to adhere to the idea that Ren is some kind of immortal being. He surely would have killed us all by now. "I just think something is wrong with him tonight. And I would like to find out more."

"Well if you're not about to believe my stories, then you might as well be logical," Mabel mutters tiredly, disappointed I'm not joining in her theatrics.

I lean back on my pillow. "Your theory?"

"He was drunk. A sophisticated drunk."

A frown flutters across my face. Did I see Ren drinking at the dinner table? They all seemed very much sober, having been drinking nothing but water, I had assumed. But could he possibly have been drunk? He seemed coherent and fully in his own head space. Whatever is off about him, that's not it.