GUEST POST – Squirrel Hunt by Holly Day #GuestPost #Excerpt
✨ GUEST POST ✨
Hello, everyone! Thank you, Addison, for allowing me to drop by again 🥰
I’m Holly Day, and I write MM romance stories to celebrate specific days. This month, we’re celebrating National Read In The Bathtub Day, which is observed annually on February 9th, and we’re doing it through Squirrel Hunt.
Have you ever read a story with a squirrel shifter?? I write a lot of shifters. I write a lot of paranormal stories about all kinds of creatures, but there are often shifters in them. This is only the second book where I have a squirrel shifter, though.
My first squirrel story is called Squirrel Circus, and it’s set in the same world as Squirrel Hunt, but you don’t have to read it to enjoy Squirrel Hunt. In this world, we have all kinds of shifters and vampires, and in Doson, the town where the story takes place, there is a werewolf pack.
Konrad Broody is the alpha, and he’s pretty laid-back. He doesn’t shun interspecies couples. He might not like that one of his wolves has mated a human female, but you don’t have a say in who your mate is. So when the human woman now part of his pack asks for a place to hide a friend who is on the run from an abusive ex, Konrad agrees to help.
He assumed the friend was another human woman.
The only reason Dahy Doocey went to Doson (and I just now realised how many names beginning with D I have in this story 😳) is that he heard his cousin – squirrel cousin is a loose concept – mated a wolf and lived to tell the tale. If one squirrel can survive in Doson, then maybe two can too. But first, he has to check that it’s safe, so he asks his online friend for help finding a place to stay.
When he meets up with her, she smells of wolf. Dahy is convinced his final moment has arrived, but instead, his friend helps him. She’s new to the world of shifters, and assumes Dahy is a bear. He doesn’t correct her, not when she’s agreed to help him. There is only one problem, okay two, since he has to come clean at some point, but the major problem is that the one she’s asked to help them is the local werewolf alpha.
They come up with a plan to disguise Dahy’s scent with some stinky perfume, but it’ll only work for so long.
I had a lot of fun writing this! Nut-hoarding squirrels make the day better 😆 It’s a fated mates story, interspecies couple, third person, dual POV. And since we’re celebrating National Read In The Bathtub Day, there will be some books and some baths.
Read on if you want to how Dahy tells his friend that he isn’t a bear shifter!
Squirrel Hunt
by Holly Day
Release Day: February 3, 2024
Genre: Paranormal Gay Romance
Length: Novella / 39,881 Words / 146 Pages
🛒 Purchase Links
Blurb
The smartest thing a squirrel can do is avoid werewolves, not get mated to one.
All Dahy Doocey wants is an unlimited supply of nuts and a safe place to stay. As a squirrel shifter, he always has to hide and watch out for stupid wolves and other predators. Frozen and starving, he reaches out to a friend, not knowing she recently mated a shifter. She agrees to hide him anyway, but now he’s neck-deep in wolves. Not ideal.
Konrad Broody is the alpha of a werewolf pack. When he agreed to hide a friend of the newest pack member, he assumed it was a human woman, not a squirrel. And he certainly didn’t believe Dahy would turn out to be his mate. The problem is squirrels often end up dead when spending time around wolves.
Konrad will fight anyone who dares go near Dahy, but when Dahy goes missing, there is no one he can fight. Dahy should’ve known hanging around wolves would get him in trouble. How will he be able to escape the idiots keeping him prisoner before they eat him? Stupid wolves.
Excerpt
Not good. What if someone had been following him, had seen him with Myka, and now were targeting her somehow? He’d never meant to put her in danger. He hadn’t believed anyone had followed him from Fewood. He’d spent days here without seeing any signs of being pursued.
“What did he want?” She couldn’t come here anymore. His grip tightened on the bag. He should leave. He never should have reached out to her. What if she got hurt because of him?
“He looked around for a long time, then he ordered a cup of coffee. I didn’t see him leave. One second, he was there, the next time I looked, he was gone.”
“Do you think he followed you here?”
She paled. “Shit, Dahy. I didn’t think…” She looked out the window. “Is he after you? I believed he was there for me. Not everyone is pleased Roan has a human mate, you know? They’re an entire pack here, and I’m the only human. The only one. Isn’t it strange? There has to be a lot more humans than shifters, and not a single one of the pack members has a human mate.”
“Didn’t you say everyone had been friendly since you moved here?”
“The girls.” She nodded. “They’re all human and don’t have a clue that shifters exist. It’s Bella, who you’ve met, and some of her friends, and a couple I’ve met through work. I never would’ve made it without them because the wolves…” She grimaced. “I love Roan with all my heart, and I think Konrad is a good guy, but there are others.”
Not good, this was not good.
“Maybe we shouldn’t see each other for a couple of days.”
She nodded slowly.
“If they’re after me, they’ll perhaps move on if they realize we’re not in contact. If they’re there for you…” He stared at her. “Can Roan spend a day or two at the coffee shop?” He might be a stupid wolf, but he could protect her better than Dahy ever could.
“I don’t know. I’ll tell him about it. He’s overprotective, and it wasn’t a guy I’ve seen before. It doesn’t mean he isn’t part of the pack. Some leave to visit other packs or go on jobs for a couple of months at a time. Maybe he only wanted to swing by and have a look at Roan’s human mate.” She winced.
Dahy put the bag down, grabbed the one Myka held, and put it next to the first one before pulling her into his arms. “I’m sure it’s nothing. We don’t know if he’s a shifter, right? But if he is, and if he was there because of me, I’m so, so sorry.”
She pushed at him only to hug him back. Dahy almost groaned. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d hugged someone, and it felt so good.
“Don’t be stupid. I wanted to help you. I still want to help you. No one deserves to spend their lives being afraid, Dahy. I’ll help you find a safe place.”
A lump grew in his throat, and he wished he’d been honest with her from the beginning. He gripped her shoulders and took a step back. “I’m not a bear. The reason I’m on the run is that I’m not a bear or a wolf or a lion.”
She frowned. “You’re not a shifter?” Then her frown grew deeper. “I’ve heard you make non-human sounds when scared. You’re a shifter.”
He nodded. “I am, but I’m a non-predatory shifter, which means most other shifters think I should die.”
“What?” She increased the distance between them, and he lowered his arms.
“The reason we couldn’t tell your alpha what I am is because he’d most likely eat me.”
She huffed a laugh, but when Dahy didn’t join in, she sobered. “You’re serious?”
Nodding, he took a step back. Maybe it would have been better to let her continue to believe he was a bear.
“So what are you?”
“Squirrel.”
She barked a laugh. “Seriously, what are you?”
He sighed and shifted. The one good thing about being a squirrel shifter was you didn’t need to undress before you shifted. Since you got smaller it was easy to get out of the clothes once you’d completed the shift.
It took a second or two for him to get his bearings once he’d completed the transformation, and he gazed upon Myka who gaped open-mouthed at him. “Oh my God, you’re so cute!” She bent down and scooped him up. “Not that you aren’t cute in human form. You are.” She giggled, and he chattered at her. Mostly for show. He didn’t mind being called cute.
About Holly Day
According to Holly Day, no day should go by uncelebrated and all of them deserve a story. If she’ll have the time to write them remains to be seen. She lives in rural Sweden with a husband, four children, more pets than most, and wouldn’t last a day without coffee.
Holly gets up at the crack of dawn most days of the week to write gay romance stories. She believes in equality in fiction and in real life. Diversity matters. Representation matters. Visibility matters. We can change the world one story at the time.
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