Page 73 of Her Alien Neighbor

“Hey! Alien brothers! Come out here!” I yell through the house. “Code red! Dragon emergency!”

“Vanessa, stop shouting,” he says, trying to calm me down.

Zev emerges from his wing upstairs, and Mylo emerges from the other side of the first floor, down the opposite hall from Axil’s room.

“Come on!” I shout again. “We’ve got some serious shit to deal with here.”

“Vanessa, please,” Axil begs as his two brothers join us in the living room, sitting on opposite couches.

They look mildly afraid of me, which I would find funny if our current predicament wasn’t so dire. “Were you planning on telling them?” I ask Axil.

“Telling us what?” Zev asks, crossing his arms over his chest.

I turn to Axil. “Do you want to tell them, or should I?”

Axil runs a hand through his hair. “Fine.” He holds out his hands, and says, way too casually, “I killed Trevor.”

“You what?” Zev asks the same moment Mylo asks, “Who?”

Zev’s eyes don’t leave Axil’s as he says to Mylo, “Trevor is the nefarious human male that attacked Vanessa long ago. Axil and I had a minor confrontation with him at Tipsy’s.”

“He also attacked Sam,” I clarify.

“Who is Sam?” Mylo asks.

Whew, we need to catch him up on a whole lot. Speaking of which, “Where’s Kyan?” I ask.

“Probably at work,” Axil mutters sarcastically. “Where he always is.”

“Okay, well, someone please call him and have him come home. We need to get him up to speed.” I grab my phone and turn to Axil. “I’m going to call Sam and have her come over too. She should be in on this.”

“Sam? Why? She cannot be involved.”

Dropping the phone to my side, I level him with a glare. “I don’t think you realize the sheer volume of shit you’ve gotten us into. The cops are going to question everyone who knows him. Everyone who has a connection to him.” I lower my voice. “He raped both of us. Sam and me. I don’t know if anyone is aware of what he did to her, but they definitely know what happened to me. And we just so happened to have a confrontation with his girlfriend the night he died.”

“But it looked like an accident,” Axil says, trying to reassure me. “I was sure to make it look like an accident. Why would the police question you?”

“Maybe they won’t,” I reply, doing my best to think logically, though I’m finding that to be an impossible task. “You’re right, maybe all they’ll see is a guy who was drunk and driving too fast on a dangerous road and wasn’t wearing a helmet when he crashed.”

Officer Burton’s face pops into my head. “Or maybe his uncle will be suspicious about the timing and circumstances of his death and will want to dig a little deeper. If that happens, and all of us aren’t on the same page, we are fucked. Do you understand? Fucked.”

He nods as his gaze drops to the floor. He seems very confused, which makes me feel guilty, in a way, because even though he and his brothers have been living on Earth for thirteen years and have found a way to blend in, that doesn’t mean he understands every aspect of human life. They’ve done everything possible to hide among us thus far, and Axil just went and put a bull’s-eye on his back.

Mylo pulls out his phone and starts talking to someone, presumably Kyan.

“I will call Luka,” Zev says, walking out of the living room with his phone pressed to his ear.

I take Axil’s hand. “I know this isn’t ideal, having Sam here. It exposes you. All of you. But I promise, you can trust her. And she needs to know what’s going on. If only to keep her safe.” Squeezing his hand until he looks me in the eye, I add, “We can’t let them think she had anything to do with this.”

He blows out an unsteady breath, and says, “Very well. Call her. Get her here.”

After an hour of trying to get everyone together in the same room, we end up with Kyan and Sam, but no Luka. He didn’t answer when Zev called him and hasn’t called back.

The moment Sam walks in, Mylo jerks back from where he stands in the kitchen. “You,” he says, his tone mystified as he stares at her.

She looks equally stunned. “You…have glasses?”

What is happening? “Have you two met before?” I ask.

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