Born Like This

Published by: eXtasy Books

Author : Maggie Blackbird

ISBN :978-1-4874-4366-5

Page :197

Word Count :55000

Publication Date :2025-10-31

Series : A Maizemerized Tale#2

Heat Level :

Available Formats :

Category : , Erotic Romance , Halloween , What's New

BrandsExtasy Books
Product Code: 978-1-4874-4366-5

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She went back in time to rescue him. She never counted on falling in love…

Alma Whitecrow prefers hunting and fishing with men, not romancing them. But hearing about the roguishly handsome coureur de bois, who saved her sister from the Dakota, haunts her thoughts and dreams. Well-versed in surviving the wilds, Alma resolves to travel to the mid-eighteenth century, as her sister once did, to save the man from impending death.

Charlot Baudelaire thumbs his nose at society’s expectations, content living as a loner, trading with people he calls the Saulters. If he needs a woman for the night, there is always a willing maiden. What he doesn’t expect is a spunky and stubborn female warrior to challenge him.

Charlot is not the man Alma dreamed about, and Alma is not the kind of woman Charlot pursues. But the longer they are together, the more drawn to each other they become, until Alma faces the biggest decision of her life. Stay with a man who may never reciprocate her love, or return to her Ojibway home and bland existence.

“I can’t believe you left him there to die.” Alma’s stomach shouldn’t sour at the thought, but her belly did anyway. She’d been unable to stop thinking about the fate of Charlot Baudelaire after hearing the story last year.

“There was nothing I could do.” Edie gasped, her dark eyes widening. “I told you a million times the Dakota were attacking us. I was lucky I got out of there.” She tossed a chocolate bar and a bag of chips into one of the many Halloween bags she’d hand out to the trick-or-treaters in the evening. “I’m not going to talk to you about this anymore. We talked about it enough this past year.”

The amount of defensiveness in her older sister’s voice forced Alma to fold her arms. Sure, Edie had gotten out safely, but there had to be a way to save the man who’d put his life on the line for her sister.

Guilt expanded inside Alma’s chest.

Maybe she shouldn’t have badgered Edie about Charlot again, the handsome man who’d risked his life to save her sister. A man her brother-in-law had described as sly with an eye for the pretty girls, and highly independent since he’d operated as a coureur de bois, thumbing his nose at the system New France had established for formal trade with Alma’s people, but it came with rules, payment, and a proper license. Edie had said Charlot spat on such a system, declaring nobody could tell him who he could trade with and when.

Green eyes, sandy brown hair, and a handsome face was how Edie had described Charlot to Alma.

There was no way and no how she could purge him from her mind, even though a year had passed since her sister had gone into a corn maze on Halloween night, which had transported Edie back to the mid-eighteenth century. Nobody on the rez knew what had happened, only their family, since their grandfather had insisted they keep quiet because their Ojibway community wouldn’t believe them.

Learning about the corn maze not only haunted Alma while awake, but also when she slept, but the mystical place had vanished after Edie returned to the present time thanks to Charlot, who’d bravely stood his ground against the Dakota while pushing Edie through dancing flames that returned her to the maze. Once Edie had found her way out, the mysterious place had simply disappeared.

Alma hadn’t planned on attending anything or dressing up this Halloween night. Sure, parties were happening, and one of her brothers had driven in from Winnipeg to celebrate the haunting evening, but she’d passed. Probably because the plan she’d conjured kept cropping up in her mind.

Plus, it’d be a lame party she’d attend. Everything in her world was lame these days. Even the current situation she found herself in—attending the Anishinaabe Education Institution located on one of the reserves in their Treaty area, going for her Bachelor of Arts. But her heart wasn’t in her studies. She’d only enrolled because she had to do something. With Edie finishing her degree online since she had a new baby to care for, Alma couldn’t sit around doing nothing.

She toyed with her nephew’s rattle. The infant sat in his baby chair at the kitchen table, cooing at his mother bagging candy.

Alma had already packed the provisions she’d need if she found the corn maze and ventured into the past. Maybe the mysterious skeletal creature Edie had spoken about might reappear and offer Alma the chance to save Charlot? They couldn’t just let him die.

She was an excellent hunter and had the best of all hunting dogs. Grandpa had taught her everything about the outdoors while helping her train Theodore. Perhaps that was why she found girls her age boring. Even in high school, they’d looked at her as the misfit because she was more interested in hunting and fishing or learning medicine when Great-Grandpa took her into the bush to help him pick plants so he could make his favorite batch of Tamarac tea.

She stood.

“Where’re you going?” Edie helplessly gaped at the mounds of candy needing to be bagged. “You promised to help me get ready for the kids.”

“I have to study for a test,” Alma lied. She stole a mini chocolate bar from the bunch on the table. “It won’t take you long.”

Edie sighed. “You have to stay in the present. Thinking about Charlot—”

“I’m not thinking about him.” A fistful of annoyance heated Alma’s face.

“You just finished saying you can’t believe he died. Of course you’re thinking about him.”

Alma edged to the door where she’d left her jacket and shoes. “I told you I need to study for a test. I gotta go. I’ll stop by tomorrow.”

“Go ahead. I’ll finish this by myself.” Edie furrowed her brows.

“Adrian will be home soon,” Alma said to pacify her sister. “He’s your husband. He’ll help you.”

“My husband has more important things to do than bag candy. He works full-time and is also a part-time student.”

A smidgen of guilt reared its ugly head, but Alma mentally stomped all over her conscience. “I gotta go. Bye.” She dashed to the mudroom, where she slipped on her shoes and jacket. Before her sister could grumble another word, Alma bolted out the back door straight into the setting sun.

She jumped off the steps and raced to Mom’s car. Time was on her side. No trick-or-treaters were about yet. She drove off, making the turn at Moose Drive. No one in her family understood her urgency to save someone she’d never met, but Alma couldn’t help herself. A man’s life was on the line.

Ever since Edie had returned, pregnant with her tale about going back in time where she’d met Adrian, who’d lived as a warrior named Thunder Bear and had referred to Edie as Fire Woman, unearthing the maze had become Alma’s obsession.

Although Edie insisted everything had worked out perfectly since her true love was reincarnated as Adrian, there remained unfinished business in the past. Alma’s brain kept calling her crazy because no matter how many times she’d driven to the wide-open field located before the town of Morson, no corn maze had surfaced.

Halloween. Maybe the maze only appeared during a full moon on this special night? Edie had been on her way to a Halloween party when she’d encountered the maze. Maybe Alma would finally find the mystical place.

Alma didn’t have to worry about missing the Grandmother Moon ceremony either, because they were holding the event tomorrow evening, since the women who attended were busy taking their children out for candy or handing out treats to the goblins and ghosts.

The disguise Alma had devised might also go unnoticed, thanks to the costumed people running about. She must try. Someone had to save Charlot Baudelaire.