Big Bad Wolf

The first book in the Maple Hollow series is set in Maple Hollow, a small, insular town in Aroostook County, Maine. Ruby Bellerose, a bartender in her late twenties, works at the town's unnamed bar. Ruby moved to Maple Hollow at age eight with her twin sister, Lena, after their parents were killed in a car accident. The girls were raised by their great-aunt Millie, who died the previous winter. Despite two decades in town, locals still consider Ruby "from away." Lena has been experiencing mysterious episodes in which her eyes go blank and she seems to perceive something invisible. Every doctor has found nothing wrong, and the episodes are growing more frequent, costing Lena her preschool teaching job. Ruby works double shifts to support them both while watching her sister deteriorate.

One night after closing, a stranger named Rafe enters the bar. He is tall, dark-haired, and unsettlingly intense, with silver eyes. He explains he is a woodworker hired by Macy, the bar's manager, to build new tables. Ruby is simultaneously drawn to and wary of him. After he leaves, she walks home through The Pines, a dark forest shortcut she habitually takes. Something follows her, and she hears a growl.

Over the following week, Rafe shows up every evening, and the two develop a cautious, flirtatious rapport. Meanwhile, Ruby's only real friend, Callie Winters, returns after a two-year absence she will not explain. Callie is now in a relationship with Sawyer, a childhood friend. Tension escalates when out-of-town men get rowdy at the bar. One of them gropes Ruby and calls her "Lena." Rafe threatens the man until the group flees. In his own chapters, Rafe reveals he recognizes the men as Highlanders, members of a rival werewolf pack, and is alarmed they have ventured into County territory, the region claimed by his former pack.

Days later, Ruby encounters an enormous gray wolf in The Pines who gently escorts her toward home. At the edge of her yard, a man transforms into a white wolf that lunges at her. The gray wolf intercepts, and the two fight until the white wolf retreats. The next morning, Lena discovers a naked, injured man in the garage where Ruby and Callie dragged the wounded wolf. Ruby recognizes Rafe. His wound matches the wolf's exactly. Rafe confirms he is a werewolf, born not made, able to shift at will. He has been following Ruby in wolf form to protect her. Two packs exist in Maine, the County pack and the Highland pack, and Rafe left his County pack after a violent falling-out. He suspects the Highlanders targeted Ruby and insists on driving her to and from work.

Rafe begins staying at Ruby's house, and an uneasy domestic routine takes shape, though he resists physical intimacy, insisting he is too dangerous. The Highlander who groped Ruby, whose real name is Wyatt, returns to the bar fishing for information about Lena, who once predicted a gas leak and saved everyone present. Ruby realizes Wyatt called her "Lena" when he grabbed her. The Highlanders may have been after her twin all along.

After Lena has a public episode at the bar, murmuring about wolves and blood, Callie and Sawyer reveal their own secret: Callie is a witch who spent two years training with her grandmother Eloise. Eloise, consulted via video call, recognizes Rafe as the son of Devon, the late Alpha, or leader, of the County pack. She explains that seers, people who have visions of the future, were historically hunted by werewolves for their strategic value. She theorizes the Highlanders want Lena for her gift and attacked Ruby by mistake because the twins look alike. Ruby privately confesses to Rafe that she may share Lena's abilities: She had a premonitory dream about her parents' accident the night before it happened.

As the physical tension between Ruby and Rafe builds, he recognizes with certainty that Ruby is his fated Mate, a concept from werewolf lore in which two souls are permanently bound. His father always dismissed the idea as nonsense, and Rafe is terrified. He resolves to leave Ruby for her safety. Ruby, furious at his cycle of intimacy and rejection, calls him a coward.

Ruby insists on accompanying Rafe to the County pack's encampment. On the journey, Rafe tells her about Scarlet, a human woman he loved who was killed by his own father after she rejected Rafe upon learning what he was. He also reveals that his dying father forced the three brothers into a fight for Alpha succession. Rafe scarred his younger brother Theo's face and was pinned by Knox, the eldest, but broke a sacred taboo by shifting to human form in the ring so Theo could escape. Devon disowned him. At the encampment, Knox grudgingly agrees to widen patrols, but Rafe withholds information about Lena's seer abilities, fearing Knox would exploit her. Ruby nearly names their bond aloud on the hike back, but Rafe's alarmed expression stops her. Back home, Ruby tells Lena everything, but Lena is furious at being kept in the dark.

Wyatt ambushes Ruby at her yard with two wolf companions, revealing that the Highland Alpha wants a seer because Knox is proposing a merger of the two packs to jointly buy land, and the Highlanders do not trust the deal. Ruby breaks free, but one wolf injures her shoulder. Rafe arrives, shifts, and kills all three attackers. He returns covered in blood. Ruby is terrified for him, not of him, but Rafe misreads her horror as proof she sees him as a monster. He tells her it is over and retreats to his cabin.

Ruby follows and confronts him, but Rafe invokes Scarlet's fate and insists he will only bring danger. Rafe's stepmother Nell later visits and reveals that her own sister left the pack to be with her fated Mate, confirming the bond is real. She urges Rafe to stop believing his father's lies. Rafe returns to Knox and reveals Lena is a seer, but Knox offers only to absorb both sisters into the pack, a power grab Rafe refuses. Meanwhile, Ruby learns from Macy that a man matching Knox's description visited the bar asking for her.

For a week, Rafe resumes silently escorting Ruby through The Pines in wolf form. She senses him and speaks into the darkness each night, telling him she misses him. Her community rallies around her, and Lena begins working with Callie on exercises to control her visions. One night Rafe finally steps from the shadows. He confesses he loves her and admits he has been punishing himself. Ruby declares she loves him too. He warns that mating is permanent. Ruby asks him to chase her through the woods.

She runs. He pursues. They consummate the bond in a moonlit clearing, and Rafe bites Ruby's neck, marking her as his Mate. Back at his cabin, Ruby tells him about Knox visiting the bar and Wyatt's revelation about the proposed pack merger. They agree the larger conflict is unresolved but commit to facing it together.

A month of peace follows. Ruby and Rafe split time between his cabin and her cottage. Lena, still angry at Ruby for being overprotective, insists on independence. No further attacks occur. Then, exactly one month after claiming Ruby, Rafe wakes to find her sitting bolt upright, eyes wide with terror. She has had a vision: Lena is gone. The novel ends on this cliffhanger, with the narrative continuing in the next installment of the series.