Page 221 of As The Shifter World Turns

We stepped out of the office and to the first room. I hadn’t seen it in a week, but what I remembered of it was that it was green. Sooo very green. Like 1970s avocado green. I mean maybe they made it work, but I wasn’t optimistic.

“This is the room from the contestant Hans,” Micah said and Archer reached up to knock.

“Welcome to your home away from home,” Hans said as he opened the door. “As you will see I played up the retro vibes of this place.”

We stepped inside and he sure had from macramé plant holders to shaggy green carpet to groovy art. It was awful and at the same time magnificent. They walked a fine line and somehow managed to nail it.

“This is… retro,” Archer said. “And you did utilize green throughout.” He didn’t seem to think so. And for every day he’d be right. This room would suck, but as a retro getaway, this had some potential.

From there we went into the next room where we were treated to the most unusual one of the day. And completely unusable.

“I’m Ryland and I decided to think outside the box.” And outside the box it was.

There were no beds. None. Nothing that even pretended to be. He had a few bean bags and a couple of video game chairs and that was it as far as seating. There were some tiny side tables for drinks, I guessed, next to them and the room was filled with Christmas lights. He called them fairy lights, but there was nothing magical about them. It was bad. The entire thing was awful.

We thanked him, Archer too stunned to say anything but, “Where’s the bed?”

And if only that was the worst of them. We had a room decorated for someone who brought their cat. Ninety percent of the room was a cat condo.One person turned their room into a vampire's den with coffins. Not lined ones people could lay down in either. They were standing up against the wall, made out of cheap ass wood.

The only saving grace was an extremely basic hotel room. I’d have thought it too boring to stand a chance if I saw it first, but after the others, I wasn’t so sure. One thing was certain, there were some great ass episodes to be carved out of today.

“This was… they’re ruining the motel.” Archer leaned into his mate once we were back in the office and out of earshot of the others.

“We can have round two be fixing the round one flops if you want,” Micah suggested, wrapping his arms around his mate. “That can work, right?”

“I guess. The boring room and the retro room—we could maybe keep those. Charge extra to be wrapped in green,” I informed them. “On a good note, people are going to think these are so bad they’ll need to watch next season.”

“I hope so. We’ll need the revenue to fix this hot mess,” Archer said. “No beds! Who would make a hotel room with no beds?””

He did have a point.

97

LIVING NEXT DOOR

Neil

“Neil? Martin?” There was a pounding in my head accompanied by the unmistakable sound of Daire’s voice. But when I opened my eyes the pounding was on the front door.

“What time is it?” my mate asked as he picked up his phone.

“Too early for Charlie to be awake, that's for sure.” Our little boy was usually the first one to wake up just after it got light. “I’ll see what he wants.” I stifled a yawn and put on my robe.

Before we were both mated, there used to be plenty of mornings where Daire would need to talk about some shit he’d done the night before. Or my anxiety would be overwhelming and I’d be freaking because I was supposed to leave the building and was too scared to.

But those moments were rare now we each had a life partner.

“Morning.” I opened the door and without a hello, my grizzly shifter friend strode in.

“I need you and Martin to look at something.”

“Shouldn’t Nate be doing that?” I envisioned Daire pulling his pants down and asking me to inspect a pimple on his butt.

“What? No.” Daire made a face as he tapped his phone.

I headed to the kitchen because whatever he wanted to tell us, it’d be better with caffeine. Martin appeared, pulling on a T-shirt over his sweatpants.

“Good you're both here.”

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