27. Xander

CHAPTER 27

XANDER

Gay for Lizard Dick: Woooooo… that was a LOT of drama, huh? AFTER dinner, I mean. Not the during dinner shit. [Totally innocent smiley emoji]

The One with the Biggest Dick: So… NOT the part where you thought you were accused of being a giant lizard?

I sighed and tucked my phone away before refocusing on the murder mystery at hand.

This is not how our rehearsal dinner was supposed to go.

The first problem—besides deciding how to deal with the deceased fried chicken wizard—was that I hadn't exactly brought any lab equipment to my own goddamn wedding.

At least we have a supe on hand who can create a toxicology lab out of thin air.

Despite Ziggy's possessive growling, Micah happily agreed to let me pull on his powers to create the high-tech equipment I needed to test the following :

□ Felix's stomach contents

□ Felix's liver tissue

□ Twenty or so servings of half-eaten fried chicken

□ Isaiah's apparently homemade hot sauce

□ My patience

There wasn't much to be done about the last item on my list, but for the rest, I was bringing my extensive experience determining causes of death for endangered marine life off the coast of Big City.

Good enough.

It also helped that the crowd had thinned out. After Theo fled the scene of the crime, Vi hustled everyone out of the kitchen who didn't need to be there while Butch coaxed his mother out of retirement to go grill the side characters with him.

Including Isaiah Salah, of all people…

"He didn't do it," Gabe muttered for the six hundredth time in the past hour.

I sighed again—making sure the exasperation was loud —and turned to face my brother. He'd refused to leave when Vi brought out the muscle and was now clinging to Ziggy's arm as if he was a big friendly alien and not one of the most unnerving creatures I'd ever met.

What I wouldn't give to pull power from any of these Stellarians, though…

Really terrify the masses with my badassery.

"I hate to tell you this, Padawan," I busted out Wolfy's nickname in hopes of getting baby Suarez to snap out of his pity party and pay attention, "but the pharmakon I'm detecting throughout Felix's body is also in every bottle of ‘Izzy's Ish.' It's not looking good for our boy… "

With a wince, I glanced at Micah, remembering we were talking about his brother, but the Salah family scientist seemed more contemplative than concerned.

He's certainly more chill about the situation than his little boyfriend here.

And I don't mean Ziggy.

"So what is the deal with you sluts?" I vaguely waved at Gabe and Micah before realizing I'd included a scowling Stellarian in my suggestive gesturing.

Oops.

I attempted a save by turning to Dre, who'd also refused to leave once his twin made it clear he was staying. While he hadn't joined the cuddle puddle, he'd been creeping from the sidelines, clearly approving of… whatever was going on here.

Maybe I'm the one who needs to leave the room.

"Are you actually judging us, Xanny?" Dre scoffed.

"No." I rolled my eyes, not appreciating the insinuation but also unable to argue with it. "I'm being nosey. There's a difference."

Give a dog a bone here.

Anything to distract me from how Felix dying is my fault.

Among other things…

"What do you think is going on?" Dre fired back, his tone turning measured and deadly calm, making me tense.

Is he… domming me?!

Butch once texted me a meme that said, " Brats are Doms who love to lose while Doms are brats who want to win ." Granted, he only did it so I'd spank him raw once he got home from work, but I sometimes wondered if he had a point.

But no way in hell am I losing to a baby Dom.

"Well, I can tell you what it looks like from an outsider's perspective," I drawled. "It looks like two alien Rambos casually wife-swapping, despite their inventus bonds."

I hadn't meant to sound so combative, but sibling rivalry mixed with guilt was a bad combination. Butch's blatant lack of enthusiasm for this wedding was probably contributing to my tone, but I was still banking on my baby telling me if he was having second thoughts.

He would tell me, right?

Right?!

"Wife-swapping, huh? Cute guess but wrong." Dre smirked, aggravating me further. "But I wouldn't expect an Earthling to understand. You have an inventus bond. We have stellar collisions. We are not the same."

Spare me, space boy.

"Whatever, Shock," I muttered. "If you losers want to fuck up a good thing by cheating?—"

"Nobody's cheating." Micah's calm voice cut through the tension in the room like a knife. "And if that's where your mind immediately goes, I would suggest examining where your personal triggers are coming from instead of projecting your baggage onto others to feel morally superior."

JESUS!

Shots fired.

I squinted at my opponent, wondering if Dr. Ownit had somehow disguised himself as the unassuming hero to crash my party with his Debbie Downer routine.

Maybe I should try unmasking him, Scooby Doo-style.

Ziggy laughed, which then made me wonder if someone had switched bodies with him. "Welcome to ‘unbilled therapy time' with Dr. Micah, Xander. It's unrelenting but worth the pain."

He paused to gaze down at his stellar collision with an open adoration that Gabe immediately mirrored with his own heart eyes.

I assume Dr. Micah does group sessions.

"Is that what you've been busy thinking about over there, Salah?" I scoffed, yanking an oddly untouched plate of fried chicken closer for examination. "My unhealed trauma?"

Because he actually wasn't a dick like the rest of us, Micah rubbed the back of his neck self-consciously. "Haha, noooo… I was thinking about how the time of death doesn't match up with how fast pharmakon supposedly affects normies."

Huh?

"You're right," Ziggy murmured appreciatively. "While pharmakon doesn't work as instantaneously as your Hollywood movies would have us believe, it still kills non-supes within minutes. Gabriel witnessed Felix first try Isaiah's hot sauce well before dinner, a good two hours ago, but the body still hasn't entered rigor mortis…"

He untangled himself from Gabe and confidently strode to the crate of ‘Good Ish' I'd carefully opened and extracted samples from for testing.

"I already—" I began but was promptly ignored by an alien exhibiting all the audacity of the skinsuit he wore .

Well then.

I watched, hypnotized, as he unleashed half a dozen starry tendrils before plunging them into the bright orange liquid with an obscene squelching sound.

"Fuck," Micah choked out before his cheeks darkened.

A quick glance revealed the twins watching Ziggy work with the same horny intensity, and I had never felt more vanilla in all my life.

What those tendrils do?

I'm serious.

What do they do?

All kinky fuckery aside, I shuffled closer, because Alien Rambo turning into Alien Columbo before my eyes was now my Roman Empire.

"Hmm…" Ziggy's brow furrowed. "The poison hasn't settled to the bottom yet. This means it was added recently— after the bottles were carried to the kitchen."

"I knew it!" Gabe cried triumphantly. "Someone's trying to set Izzy up. I watched him take the first bottle out of the crate and hand it to Felix… and then he was outside with me until dinner."

Micah was observing Gabe closely, chewing his bottom lip, as if he wanted to ask my brother something but was too shy to make the first move.

It's like watching two teenagers dance around each other.

"Too salty." Ziggy grimaced, withdrawing his magically clean tendrils from the bottles. "I'm glad none of this so-called Ish was added to my plate. "

"Because you prefer your corpus spongiosum to be raw, huh, Space Daddy?" Micah teased, poking a finger at the alien in a way that probably would have lost him a hand if it had been anyone else.

Ziggy was a secret soft boi for his stellar collision, however, as he only smiled slyly. "You would know, babygirl."

I rolled my eyes so far back, I saw my enormous brain. "You do know I understand Latin, right? So there's no need for thinly veiled allusions about choking on dick."

Read the room.

Micah blushed again. "A-actually, I only choked because I tried to eat too much too fast. But then Zig cut it up for me, and it went down much easier…"

Wait, what?

Instead of explaining what the actual fuck, Ziggy coolly returned his attention to the evidence, gliding his tendrils over the leftover chicken like a psychic detective searching for clues.

While I waited for the next revelation, my gaze drifted to Felix's corpse, and a fresh burst of guilt slithered through my veins. Then, more guilt blasted through me as I remembered Kai's annoyingly accurate dig.

"Why would you need a scalpel? You're more than capable of doing damage without it."

Even though I was starting to suspect she thought I was in the wrong—and that she might be right—I was in no rush to give my bestie the satisfaction of the apology she probably deserved.

I've got time.

"I wonder why Kai's chicken was the only one poisoned… "

Any self-righteousness I'd been feeling immediately morphed into terror at Ziggy's offhand remark. "E-excuse me? How do … What makes you think that was her plate?"

I pointed at the untouched portion indignantly, because if a fried chicken-loving Kai hadn't eaten at all, she must have been really pissed.

Better pissed than dead, Xander.

Ziggy hummed thoughtfully. "For a supe, you're not particularly observant, Antihero. Your normie spent the entire dinner staring at you while trying not to cry."

I've NEVER seen Kai cry…

Now I felt like the biggest asshole on the planet. My bestie, the one who had been there for me through thick and thin, the one carrying my child, had been hurting, and I hadn't even noticed.

"Give me a break, Andromeda," I grumbled—anything to redirect. "I barely was a supe until a year ago. Kind of like a sleeper agent."

Ziggy cocked his head, smoothly retracting his tendrils back into his stolen body, much to everyone's disappointment. "I'd say your sister is more the sleeper agent from what I understand of your family's powers."

"You know how our powers work?" Dre asked, pinning the alien with his mind melter stare.

Good luck, Baby Dom.

That's Space Daddy.

An inhuman smile spread over Ziggy's deceptively boyish face. "Of course. Gaining that knowledge was part of my agreement with Wolfgang when I offered to bring Theo in." His smile changed to a glare. "And why I was so displeased to discover you both could star hop."

"We didn't know we could," Gabe quietly pleaded, tentatively placing his hand on Ziggy's forearm again, as if needing the connection. When the alien gazed down at him, he added. "We didn't know we were Stellarians until recently, and we're still learning what that even means…"

Ziggy sighed, and I watched in amazement as he lifted his other hand and tucked a wayward strand of hair behind Gabe's ear in an almost brotherly gesture.

"I know," he softly replied, apparently soft for all the subby sluts. "I'm still learning too."

Then, his chest began to glow, which caused Gabe's chest to glow—then Dre's and even Micah's— until they were all lit up like a gaggle of goddamn E.T.s.

We are definitely not the same…

"So, the only plate that was poisoned was Kai's?" I clarified, blowing out a slow breath to quell my growing panic. "The choice of poison wouldn't have done much to supes anyway, so maybe this was an attack against normies in general?"

I hope…

"Erich was also at dinner tonight," Dre pointed out. "Granted, he was eating the vegetarian option, but we all would've known if he was poisoned. Luca would tear shit up if something happened to him."

What?!

Apparently, being observant wasn't my superpower, as it was news to me that our Swiss Stellarian had a normie boytoy.

Why is everyone hiding the tea from me ?

"It… sounds like Kai was the target, Xander," Micah hesitantly said. "You should probably make sure she's protected?—"

I already had my phone in hand, texting Vi that in no uncertain terms was she to leave Kai's side.

Not until we figure out who's behind this.

The One with the Biggest Dick: I'll do my best, doofus. You pissed her off enough that she locked me out of the bungalow.

Sigh.

"Okay, I need to go check on… things," I muttered as I shoved my phone into my pocket again.

Just need to figure out who murdered Felix and how to cover it up… protect Kai… apologize to Kai eventually… find my fiancé… maybe get some goddamn sleep for our wedding tomorrow… if he still wants to get married…

Fuck.

"Does this mean Izzy's off the hook?" Gabe piped in, officially finding my last nerve.

"No, it does not," I snapped, beyond done with everyone and everything. "Just because you want something doesn't mean it's going to happen, Awe."

I ignored the petulant tap on my brain as I spun on my heel and left the horny glo worms to their intergalactic sex party.

Some of us have work to do.