HOME IS WHERE THE CLAM SHELL IS

Back home, it seemed that Chloe had visited. Mum was sitting on the sofa pouring over the designs and drawings.

Killion was pouring tea, both the kind in pretty flower tea cups (for mum) and the kind that mum said Alphas did not repeat whenever I tried to tell her what Dean said his mum said. For some reason, mum didn't seem to find anything wrong with betas repeating it.

Chloe, according to Killion, was quite a character. He had been in communication with her dealing with various design issues or budgets that Mum had wanted to fix. It sounded like Killion was handling Chloe alright though. In fact, Mum said the two of them were going on like a house on fire.

Killion immediately apologized for that. It wasn't his fault, Mum said. Chloe was just excited by him.

What the hell did that mean? But I decided not to ask. I did take a seat and help myself to a cookie. Might as well get comfortable.

"I'm glad you were here though." Mum admitted to Killion, "Sometimes Chloe can be a little overwhelming for me. And it was good you managed to stay firm and had the deer heads removed from the living room design and the budget, oh goddess, you were a savior. I don't know how you do it."

Killion beam, his eyes bent in crescents, "If I can negotiate with vampires, I can negotiate with a human."

Hahaha. Killion reckons negotiating with Chloe similar to negotiating with a vamp.

Humans like Chloe are amazing like that. Wildcards. On one hand they are physically weak, prone to diseases, and dulled in their senses. On the other, they do amazing things. Some good, some bad, but always surprising. They invent ridiculously useful technology like the internet. They make up games and stories. They can really give even a Beta wolf like Killion a hard time.

In our recorded history, whenever a human becomes a Luna of a pack, the pack usually underwent a dramatic change, either for the better or worse. So naturally, I found humans, particularly the interesting ones like Chloe fascinating.

As fascinating as she was, Chloe hadn't been able to finish the new designs for my room until today. But this was only because she has been busy finishing up her project with the Black Forest Alpha.

Apparently he was very into tropical forests and shipping in teak wood furniture had been a horror story all on its own, one that she regaled Killion with all the details of.

While talking about it, she ended up telling Killion that the Black Forest Alpha had a special guest suite set up for a secret guest. The main room was rather masculine and came with its own suite of other bedrooms, an office, and living room.

Now this wasn't anything particularly strange in itself. Chloe had worked with so many eccentric rich people that she had seen quite a bit in her day, but the thing was that this guest suite was situated in the basement and had its own garage and attached stable. A stable!

At this point, Killion felt he should point out that wolves in general disliked riding horses. So the special guest was unlikely to be Lycan.

To make matters more scandalous sounding, it's door to the rest of the house was concealed and only Chloe, the Black Forest Alpha and hid Beta knew of this suite and it's entrance.

"Why did she tell you something like that?" I asked.

Killion shrugged, "I just have that effect on people."

"Ki seduced her." Mum said bluntly, and then belatedly decided she should not have condoned it, "Ki, really now."

"The more interesting thing is why this secret entrance came to her mind." Said Ki, "Did you know that your home also had a secret entrance that only the Alpha and Beta knew of?"

I cast a quick look at Mum. And then I started laughing. Oh no, looks like Dad's secret tunnel was busted.

"What's so funny?" Mum asked. She obviously didn't think it was a laughing matter.

"Nothing." I stopped laughing quickly. Dad is in deep s***. Soup. Deep soup.

"I don't believe it." Mum pressed her lips together.

"This entrance was probably even more scandalous than the Night Forest one because Chloe wasn't even shown what was behind it." Killion said.

"Why would you assume it was scandalous then?" I asked.

"So you knew about it?" Killion smiled at me.

Oh.

Killion was really good at digging up intel.

Who's side was he on anyway?

I pressed my lips together.

Mum caught my reaction and frowned to herself.

"It's alright, Ki. I am sure it is just a misunderstanding of some sort." Mum sounded pretty upset for it to be a misunderstanding.

"Why don't you just ask Dad? I mean, since you heard it from Chloe (not me)" I asked.

"I trust your dad, Sam. I will wait for when he wants to tell me." Mum said.

Well, then she'll be waiting for a long time.

Ki looked pointedly at me.

I shrugged back at him. I knew he thought it was better to just tell Mum and save her the heartache but I promised Dad I would keep his secret.

Dad came home around this point, he was early, he also looked worried, "Is everything alright?"

"Yes, it's fine. Just a misunderstanding with Chloe." Mum said.

"Chloe told Ki about a secret entrance in our basement." I informed him.

Because seriously, we all knew mum was upset. Dad being home so early and asking if everything's alright the moment he came in proved that he must have felt it in the mating bond.

I wondered how it must be to live with a full mating bond attached. I already could barely differentiate wolfie's feelings from my own. If we threw mate's feelings into my system, I might just overload and die.

"She also told Luna about a very scandalous secret entrance kept by the Alpha of Black Forest." Killion was kind enough to provide more context.

"It's just a misunderstanding, I'm sure." Mum said, her lips wobbled as she tried to force a smile.

"Goddess, perhaps we might discuss the designs for your new room in your room?" Killion indicated for me to exit the scene with him.

I cast one last look at Mum, who had just been engulfed in Dad's arms.

Yup, let's get out of here!

In my room, Killion held up three boards for me to look at:

OPTION A: THE ORIGINAL WHITE CLAM SHELL BED with sea blue walls and light pink carpets.

OPTION B: THE BLUE ROOM turned out very different from what I imagined, but I liked the blue color, just not the overall effect. Royal blue satin bed, blue carpet with gold Persian patterns in it, blue curtains, blue walls with gold circlets etched in it. Everything in heavy blue shades. Even the day curtains was in a deep blue. The only things not blue were the hard furniture, which was all black and glass, and the sheets which were white and gold.

OPTION C: WAS SOMETHING CRAZY because it looked like Chloe just gave up and went wild. She put a gold clam shell bed (yes, you read right, it was GOLD all over) in the middle of a dark blue room. The other furniture were grey and black, and the curtains and upholstery were a deep seaweed green. She included seaweed lights that blew upwards like the tall cloth things you could see in funfairs, and a underwater effect light. Overall I was rather impressed. I'm sure anyone in this room would feel like he was drowning.

I imagined mate waking up on this bed and thinking he drowned and died. Most expensive April Fool's joke. For the effect, let's make it a waterbed.

I had to ask Killion, "How did my mum like this?"

"Not very much goddess." Killion admitted.

I'm thinking OPTION B: ROYAL BLUE ROOM might be the safest. Or maybe this entire thing was to farce to guide me to pick OPTION A: THE ORIGINAL WHITE CLAM SHELL.

I was tempted to say, OPTION D: ALL OF THE ABOVE but the the problem with that was the very high chance that I would be stuck in a fish tank for a bedroom.

Killion had good taste, I asked him, "What do you think?"

Killion grinned, "I personally like the gold clam shell."

That made me laugh. Okay... oh he was serious. Okay...

What could I live with? Actually, given the amount of money Mum and Dad must be spending on this, why was I settling for something I could just live with?

"I hate it all" I blurted out.

Could I have a 'none of the above' option please?

Why couldn't I have a normal teenager room with a wooden bed and blue walls? Was Chloe being paid too much to draw normal bedrooms?

Okay, I needed to calm down. No gain in working myself up into a storm. It's just a bedroom. How could I make this work?

Maybe we could fire Chloe.

No, I was just joking. Mum would never agree anyway. She seemed to like all the other designs.

No matter how hard I thought about it I couldn't think of a way to make this work.

I studied the pictures Chloe prepared. I frowned, I growled, I flared, and I studied the pictures some more.

Killion silently waited for a good five minutes. And then he suggested, "How about we pick and choose, goddess?"

He held up the three designs, "Which wall do you like best?"

I looked at the three design boards.

"The sea blue one." The truth was even though I did like dark blue as a colour, as a wall, it was kind of oppressive.

"Which carpet?" Killion asked again.

"Pink one." I pointed at the very pale pink fuzz in the gold clam shell craziness.

"Which bed?" Killion patiently asked.

I was losing patience. If I had to pick everything out individually, why did I need a designer?

Okay, I'm being a brat, but I really wasn't good at this type of thing. It was like asking me to put together an outfit for my room to wear.

"Something that matches blue bedsheets." I said.

Killion turned the boards over and looked at the options, "Let's go with gold."

"Okay." Whatever.

Home will be where my gold clam shell was.

"Curtains?" Killion asked.

"Blue?" I asked.

"Last thing, furniture." Killion said.

"Matching?" I asked.

"Okay... So we've got seafoam blue walls, a oyster pink carpet, gold clam shell bed, blue curtains, blue sheets, and... Might I suggest light colored sheets and curtains and white furniture from the original option?"

I looked at the light colored room in OPTION 1 and then at the blue in my preferred shades in OPTION 2 and 3 and realized Killion made a good suggestion.

I guess just because I liked a color didn't mean I liked my entire room in that color. The lightness was airy and relaxing.

Essentially, we were back down to OPTION 1 with the gold clamshell bed.

I can't say I was confident about my choices or if the room would be an overpriced disaster, but Killion sounded pretty sure it would work out, and I realized that at this point, I had no idea what was best anyway.

I'd have to give up on the loft bed.

"Okay." I agreed, "Let's go with that."

"There is one more thing, goddess." Killion kept the design boards and then took out his phone to show me a photo chart of heart shaped balloons. It had every color option of a rainbow and then some.

"I was also going to ask if you had a preferred color for the balloons for Valentine's Day." Killion asked.

Normally, I would have said dark blue, but I had just learned a lesson on color picking.

"Something V-day-ish." I said, staring at Killion's screen and wondering what color V-day should be.

"Might I suggest different shades of pink?" Killion asked.

I nodded.

That would be the right feeling.

Just like my room. My room wasn't going to be a blue room after all, but it would be a light and airy and relaxing room.

"Can my sheets be in cotton candy colors?" I asked Killion. Might as well make it a happy room too.

Killion smiled, "Understood. I'll give Chloe a call."