GUEST POST :: Squirrel Blue by Holly Day #GuestPost #Excerpt
✨ GUEST POST ✨
Hello, everyone! Thank you, Addison, for allowing me to steal a spot on your blog 🥰
I’m Holly Day, and I write MM romance stories, most often paranormal but now and then a contemporary story slips through, and there’s been an alien or two making an appearance too.
All my stories are written for specific ‘national’ days. You know the kind – National Chocolate Ice Cream Day, for example, which is observed annually on June 7th. I haven’t written a story for it, but maybe I will at some point.
The story I’m here to talk about today celebrates National Peanut Butter Cookie Day, which is observed on June 12th.
I have a series of squirrel shifters, and if it’s something we know, it’s that squirrels like nuts. Some might even say they’re a bit obsessed.
Squirrel Blue is the fourth story in the A Scurry of Squirrels series. All of the stories are of a new interspecies couple, and they’re all fated mates stories.
In Squirrel Blue, Amir, who is a werewolf and works at a shifter bar, is at a food expo. He doesn’t see the point. All the visitors are human, and the majority of the exhibitors are too. Since they don’t want human customers, he doesn’t understand why his boss has booked him a booth at the expo. But right as he’s about to throw in the towel and leave, he spots a squirrel kept in the tiniest cage he’s ever seen.
No way he’s leaving the expo without first freeing the poor thing.
Shun was minding his own business, running around in the trees in squirrel form with his cousin, when all of a sudden, wolves attacked. Deneb, his cousin, got away, but Shun was captured.
The idiot wolves dyed his fur blue and shoved him in a tiny cage. He should probably be happy – as long as he’s in the cage, he won’t end up being someone’s meal, but he knows his time is up the moment the food expo comes to an end.
As if things weren’t bad enough. Right as he’s sitting there trying to come up with a plan for an escape, another werewolf comes along and Shun knows he wants him for a snack.
But maybe there is time to escape? The new werewolf appears to want to release him from the cage, so maybe Shun can jump away somewhere between the moment the cage opens and the wolf’s jaws snaps together.
Characters from previous books make an appearance, but you could read it as a standalone story if you want to. Prepare for a scatterbrained squirrel, a doting werewolf, nuts, nuts, and more nuts, and of course, some peanut butter cookies.
The previous stories in this series are Squirrel Circus, Squirrel Hunt, Squirrel in Hiding, and in September, Squirrel Found, the fifth and most likely last story in this series, will be released.
Squirrel Blue
by Holly Day
Series: A Scurry of Squirrels (Shared Universe – Book 4)
Genre: Paranormal Gay Romance
Length: Novella / 34,709 Words / 129 Pages
Heat Rating: 4 Flames
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Blurb
Squirrels do not belong in cages.
Amir Kaplan works as a chef in a werewolf bar, which is why he’s so surprised when his boss sends him to a food expo for humans. He doesn’t like being around people, which his boss knows, and they don’t want human customers, so why is he there? The moment he spots a blue squirrel in a cage, he forgets all about the why, though.
Shun Hartman is having a bad day, has had several bad days in a row. He and his squirrel cousin were running in squirrel form when Shun was captured by werewolves. They put him in a cage and dyed his fur blue, and now he’s at some sort of food fair. As if that wasn’t bad enough, there is this guy trying to steal him. Hadn’t the guy been another wolf shifter, he might have been fine with it, but how is he to know which is the better monster?
Amir refuses to leave the expo without the squirrel. He doesn’t care what conflicts will follow, no squirrel should ever be put in a cage. Shun should run away the moment Amir frees him from the cage, right? No sane squirrel waits around until their werewolf rescuer gets hungry, but why does his heart ache as soon as he’s apart from Amir?
Excerpt
Fuuuk. He had been communicating with the most-likely-a-serial-killer guy, and he hadn’t looked surprised Shun could understand him. Did he know he was a shifter?
He tried to scent the air again, but it was no use. Ingolf must’ve dyed the insides of his nostrils while he was at it.
People came and went. A young girl banged a lollipop on the side, making the entire cage bounce.
Shun pushed his nose out through the gap between two bars, the cool metal pressing against his closed eyes. The noise of the expo halls was drilling in his mind, the scent of the dye suffocating him, and his skull was pounding.
To top it off, he needed the bathroom. Yesterday had been a lesson in humiliation when he’d been forced to do his business right there on the floor in the cage. Ingolf had sprayed it off with a garden hose, the water icy cold, before Marion arrived.
How much longer would they have to be here?
His skin prickled and heat washed over him. Reluctantly, he leaned away from the bars and looked around.
The man.
He was glaring at people who quickly scurried out of his way. Dangerous. Either Morgan was blind or she was stupid.
“Tea.” He placed the mug on the table with a charming smile. Shun huffed.
“It’s raspberry. I didn’t know what you liked. I hope that’s okay.” Another smile. Shun glared at him. He didn’t care about Margot, didn’t like her. She’d jabbed him with a pen for fuck’s sake and had no qualms about having a blue squirrel locked up in a cage, but it was clear she had no survival instincts.
Then the man opened a bottle of water and poked a straw into it. Shun’s mouth turned into a desert. Water.
He watched as the man put his finger over the opening of the straw instead of drinking from it and lifting it.
“What are you doing?” Morgan’s tone was annoyed when the man brought the straw close to the cage.
“It has no water.” The man put the lower end of the straw through the bars, and Shun immediately grabbed it and brought it to his mouth. The first drop was heaven, then the idiot lifted his finger and all the water in the straw washed over him. He would’ve chattered angrily at him if he hadn’t been busy gulping down as much as he could of the water. The bottom of the cage was now wet, and he had yet to reach the level of desperation to make him kneel to lap at it.
“Oops, didn’t mean to spill in the cage.”
“Fuck. Wipe it up before Ingolf comes. He told me not to give it anything.” Morgan pushed the paper tissue the man brought her along with the tea.
“When will this Ingolf arrive?” The man rolled the tissue a little and pushed it between the bars.
“Don’t know. He said he’d get here during the day and that he would take care of Blue once he did.”
Blue. His name wasn’t fucking Blue.
The man leaned forward until his face was right by the cage, then his eyes shifted color.
Shun threw himself backward. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. He should’ve known he was a shifter. It was obvious, wasn’t it? The serial killer vibe, the way people moved out of his way.
He wanted Shun for a snack.
About the Author
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.
