Wooing Wynter Read online

  Wooing Wynter

  Magic, New Mexico

  Tianna Xander

  Published by Tianna Xander, 2020.

  To my readers.

  Wooing Wynter

  By

  Tianna Xander

  Wynter Larsen keeps telling herself that shapeshifters don’t exist after she’s abducted and held captive by a group of insane scientists trying to create them. She escaped, but she owes her freedom to those she left behind. Now, it’s her turn to help them.

  Geno Brewerigeron has kept his promise to his dying mate to raise their sons. He just needs to tie up some loose ends before he can join her in the next life. A babbling teen, a swerving car, and a woman in danger changes his lonely existence to one of excitement and gives him a new lease on life.

  Whatever the scientists injected her with was causing Wynter’s body to change. Can she trust the man who suddenly appears and promises to take her and the twin boys she has vowed to protect to Magic, New Mexico and if she does, who will protect him from the creature she’s changing into?

  Table of Contents

  Forward

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  About the Author

  Forward

  IMAGINE THE WORLDS of Magic, New Mexico... A series that brings together outstanding paranormal and science fiction authors to expand a town where witches, aliens, vampires, werewolves, goblins, sorceresses, pirates, time travelers, and paranormal live in harmony - when they aren’t joining forces to defeat the bad guys. A magical town where being abnormal is the norm!

  I’m S.E. Smith, the creator of Magic, New Mexico, and I invite you to curl up with each book now and discover all the action, the magic, and the love that makes Magic, New Mexico the ultimate go-to series for Paranormal / Science Fiction Romance readers.

  For all the stories, go to MagicNewMexico.com/books/. Grab your copy today!

  Acknowledgments

  THE AUTHOR OF THIS Book has been granted permission by S.E. Smith to use the copyrighted characters and/or worlds created by S.E. Smith in this Book; all copyright protection to the characters and/or worlds of Magic, New Mexico are retained by S.E. Smith.

  Copyright

  SCIENCE FICTION ROMANCE

  Wooing Wynter: Magic, New Mexico #53

  Zolon Warriors #5

  Copyright © 2020 Tianna Xander

  First E-Book Published July 2020

  Cover Design by Melody Simmons

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted

  in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction,

  in whole or in part, without express written permission from the author.

  All characters, places, and events in this book are fictitious or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is strictly coincidental.

  Chapter One

  “I DON’T KNOW IF I CAN do this.” Chewing her lip, Wynter watched wide-eyed as her companion grasped the bars covering the window of their cell. Like it or not, they had shared the big barred room with many others for the last several weeks.

  “You can, and you will, or you’ll end up like her.” Large muscles bunched in Ryder's upper arms, shoulders, and back as he strained to force the bars of their cage loose. Sweat poured from his face, and ran down his neck, into the thick hair on his chest.

  Wynter glanced at the corner where one of the women had shared a cot with her six-year-old twin sons, Nicky and Noah. The memory of the woman’s last words haunted her.

  “Promise me.” Melissa stared up at Wynter, her sky-blue eyes filled with tears. “I know it’s too late for me, but promise me you’ll get my boys out of here before they kill them, too.”

  “Sh...” Wynter brushed the other woman’s hair from her colorless face. “You aren’t dying. Stop talking like that.”

  Wynter knew it was a lie the moment the words left her lips. Melissa’s pale skin appeared paper-thin. Blue veins stood out against her crepe-like complexion, and a circle of blue formed around her lips as she struggled to breathe.

  “Promise me you’ll take care of them. They have no one else. Everyone else is dead, like me.” Melissa’s grip loosened, but Wynter couldn’t ignore the desperation in the other woman’s eyes.

  “I’ll take care of them.” A tear escaped and rolled down her right cheek.

  “You’ll take them somewhere they’ll be safe—you promise?”

  Wynter wasn’t sure anywhere would ever be safe again, for any of them. But she would lie if that’s what it took to give Melissa even some small measure of peace before she died.

  “I promise.” Wynter’s tears were flowing freely now. She could see her new friend slipping away, and there was nothing she could do about it.

  “Thank you,” Melissa sighed, then closed her eyes and exhaled her last breath.

  Wynter looked away from the empty cot, Melissa had so recently occupied and blinked back the tears blurring her vision. Swiping away the moisture with the back of her hand, she looked on as Ryder wrestled with the bars on the cell window. If only there were some way she could help.

  How could she leave, knowing those she left behind would suffer in her stead, but how could she stay and allow them to experiment on the children more than they already had?

  The boys hadn’t deserved what happened to them. What kind of unethical bastards used six-year-olds as guinea pigs? As far as she could tell, though, the scientist's nasty injections hadn’t worked. Nicky and Noah still appeared human—for the time being, anyway.

  One of the assistants had told her that as human adults, she and Melissa were the lucky ones. Eventually, they would merely fall asleep and not wake up due to blood loss. The others weren’t so fortunate.

  Maybe their captors had kept humans with the shifters to stop the shapeshifters from acting out. Not to mention the bonus of using them as blood donors. Though sometimes, they would give a were-being’s blood to the humans, to see what kind of reaction they would get. Wynter wasn’t sure, but she thought that was what had ultimately killed Melissa. Ryder suspected they had taken too much of her blood, and it had left too little to feed oxygen to her body and brain. It didn’t really matter what they had done. Either way, the poor young woman was just as dead.

  The things their captors did were so barbaric. Not even the children were off-limits. If anything, they’d wanted the children more. Why was yet another unanswered question.

  A muffled clang, a
ccompanied by the sound of falling dirt and stone, brought her back to the present.

  “It’s about damned time.“ A low rumble escaped Ryder’s throat as he pushed the metal bars from the window. Gently, he set the bars back in place before bending to examine them.

  “That should do it.” He swept the mortar dust from the window ledge, tossed it into the toilet, and then flushed. “Anybody who sees this should think they’re still attached. But don’t touch them until you’re ready to go. They’re heavy, and you won’t be able to keep them from falling to the ground. With any luck, they’ll miss the fire escape and fall between it and the building.”

  He didn’t have to tell her it would make a hell of a clatter if it should hit the fire escape on the way down.

  Ryder’s arms and shoulders trembled with exhaustion, but the expression on his face was one of satisfaction. Working every possible moment, it had still taken him two days since Melissa died to loosen the bars on the window. Ryder was a large man who also happened to be a werebear—not that Wynter had believed in such things before. The huge shifter wasn’t only strong, he was also intelligent, and nothing seemed to escape his notice.

  “When are we going to leave?”

  Wynter didn’t want to go without Ryder and the others. When she’d first arrived, she hadn’t believed in were-beings of any kind. When first faced with the reality of their existence, it had scared the crap out of her. Now, she counted those imprisoned with her some of her closest friends. She couldn’t fear them any more than she could have been afraid of her father. God rest his soul.

  “We aren’t leaving. You and the children are. Take Melissa’s boys and get them the hell out of here. I’ll do my best to give you a chance to escape.” He pointed to a desk in the corner. “You see that set of keys? One of the assistants left them there this morning. They have a key fob. I’ll keep them preoccupied with containing me when they come back. Maybe we’ll get lucky, and they’ll leave the cell door open again. If they do, grab those keys and get the hell out of here. But no matter what, go through that window and run.”

  When assistants had left the door open a few times before, none of them had been sure if it was a test, or if the assistants were really that absent-minded. When a few of the prisoners attempted to break out the last time, they made the mistake of using the corridor through the building. Either their captors guarded the hallway, or it was booby-trapped. No one knew for sure. They only knew their cellmates hadn’t come back. Their only information on the escape was the gunshots they’d heard during the attempted breakout.

  “After you get through the window, make use of the fire escape attached to the side of the building to reach the ground. Once on the ground, use the key fob to find the car when you reach the parking lot. Don’t look back, and don’t wait for anyone else. Get those boys out of here.”

  Grasping her by the shoulders, Ryder stared at her with his dark chocolate eyes, fringed with thick lashes the color of strong coffee. She could have fallen for the man, had he not been at least a decade her junior.

  “Head to New Mexico. There’s a town there called Magic. It’s full of people who are different... like me. Once you’re there and safe, then you can worry about us. Tell them where we are, and maybe they’ll come for us. Promise me you won’t stop until you get there.”

  “O-okay.” She nodded her head. Wynter’s stomach churned at the thought of climbing through the window and out onto the flimsy-looking fire escape at her age.

  Just the idea of what a fall could do to her middle-aged body terrified her. Plus, she was so afraid of heights, merely climbing through the window was going to take every ounce of courage she had. But she would do it. She had no choice.

  “I won’t stop until we get to Magic.”

  Wynter glanced around the cell and wiped her sweaty palms on her hands. There had been seventeen men, women, and children sharing the cell when she’d first arrived. There wasn’t even a curtain between the rest of the room and the toilet. Their captors didn’t give a damn about privacy for their prisoners.

  There were only a few of them left now—the two six-year-old boys, Ryder, a pair of adult dragon-shifter twins, and Wynter. The rest had disappeared during their attempted escape or died during the torture their captors had called testing. At the moment, the boys were napping in the corner, and the dragon twins were off somewhere being examined.

  The insides of her elbows throbbed, where the assistants repeatedly stuck her with their large needles and drawn her blood. They’d been taking more and more of it every day until she’d grown weak—almost too weak to do as she’d promised. She might have been too exhausted if they hadn’t injected her with some other blood the day before. Wynter knew better than to hope that the blood had been her own.

  She looked down at her bruised arms and hoped that whatever they gave her didn’t harm her and didn’t do what the scientists had expected. Her stomach rolled at the scent of antiseptic. It was still strong in her nose, mixed with the smell of too many unwashed bodies sharing the same small space.

  The sound of rattling keys came just before the outer door opened. Four burly guards entered the room and crossed to the cell.

  “Take her.” The lab assistant in charge stood with his hands in his pockets, his face grim. He appeared as though he didn’t particularly like his job. “Hurry up about it. The doc wants more of her blood. He thinks he’s onto something.”

  “You’re not taking her to bleed her dry, you sons-of-bitches!” Ryder stepped in front of her, drew his arm back, and let his fist fly right into the closest man’s face.

  The guard's nose gave way with a crunch, and he brought his hands up with a howl of pain.

  “Okay, you asshole, if you want to go, too, we’ll oblige you.” Another guard stepped forward, raised his stun gun, and hit Wynter’s would-be-protector in the center of his bare chest.

  The moment the electric shock hit Ryder, thick brown hair sprouted on his arms and trunk. His fingers changed to long, lethal claws, and he growled. The men shocked him again, and yet again. When he finally faltered, they hauled him from the cell. Even after being stunned three times, Ryder still managed to put up one hell of a fight. It took all four of them to drag him from the room.

  Hesitating for only a moment, she glanced at the boys, who huddled in the corner, hiding beneath the blanket on the cot whimpering. Moving fast, she exited the cell and headed for the desk and the keys Ryder had pointed out to her.

  Taking Ryder’s advice, Wynter didn’t consider the hallway—she heard the guards lock the door behind them, anyway. They had most likely secured it when they realized they hadn’t closed the cell door.

  Wynter grabbed the keys, raced back into the cell, and then gave the bars a shove. Just as Ryder had predicted, they fell between the fire escape and the building, hitting the ground with a loud clang.

  Wasting no more time, Wynter lifted the boys out through the second-story window and onto the fire escape. She didn’t trust the rickety metal contraption attached to the side of the old warehouse, but they were out of options.

  “Hurry down the steps, boys. But be careful.” She hoped her whispered words would spur them on.

  Rickety or not, Wynter must follow the boys down to the ground and get the hell away from there. Thankfully, the twins had managed to crawl down to street level before she gathered the courage to make her way out onto the ancient set of metal steps. Soon after she put her weight on the platform, the metal groaned, and a few of the stabilizing bolts broke free of the building.

  Dammit, I should have known my fat ass would cause this thing to fall off the wall.

  After a few loud clangs, the fire escape parted from the building and crashed to the asphalt below.

  Wynter couldn’t breathe for a moment. Had her lungs collapsed? When she was finally able to inhale, the pain hit. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to blot out the sight of the twins staring down at her from beside the jumble of knotted steel, their sky-blue eyes wide w
ith fear. Tears streamed down the two boys’ cheeks while they tugged at the tangled metal in an attempt to release her from the wreckage.

  Her back ached when she moved. Please, God, tell me I didn’t break my back. I have to get these little boys out of here before those assholes experiment on them again.

  Wynter wiggled her toes. So far, so good. She then flexed one foot and then the other. Taking a deep breath, she pushed herself up onto her elbows.

  “Are you okay, Auntie Wynter?” Nickie—or was it Noah—leaned forward. Grasping the tangled metal, he pulled, leaning back to use his weight to move the pressure from her legs. His brother joined him, and they managed to lift the twisted, thin girders a half-inch, or so. That probably should have worried her, but she was too preoccupied with getting them the hell out of there that she ignored it, mostly.

  Taking a deep breath, she clenched her teeth and braced herself for the coming pain before she wrenched first her right and then her left leg from under the pile of rusted steel. With every ounce of strength left in her, Wynter pushed herself to her feet, grabbed each of them by the hand, and half ran, half limped through the parking lot. Pressing the lock button on the key fob, she almost sobbed with relief when a horn honked, and the lights blinked on a sedan to her right.

  Wynter’s heart slammed in her chest when she noticed the tall, wrought-iron fence running along the perimeter. Would the car be strong enough to ram through the gate? She closed her eyes and said a quick prayer that it was.

  She secured the boys in the back seat and climbed behind the wheel. With trembling fingers, she started the car, shifted into drive, mashed the gas, and headed for the lot entrance in the distance.

  The gate opened as she steered for the road. She glanced at the security pass on the windshield and sighed with relief. The sides of the car scraped the edges of the gate on the way through, and she jerked the wheel, taking the corner at a breakneck speed she would never have tried before her involuntary incarceration as a lab rat. The car fishtailed as the tires hit the dirt road. Knuckles white, Wynter refused to loosen her grip on the steering wheel, nor would she lift her foot from the gas, unwilling to slow down until she reached civilization.