Moon Called (mercy Thompson, #1)

The first installment of the Mercy Thompson series is set in a version of contemporary America where supernatural creatures exist alongside humans, most of them hidden from public knowledge. The fae were forced to reveal themselves decades earlier, but werewolves, vampires, and other beings remain secret.

Mercedes "Mercy" Thompson is a walker, a rare Native American shapeshifter who can take coyote form at will. She runs a Volkswagen repair shop in the Tri-Cities area of eastern Washington. One day, a gaunt teenage boy appears at her garage asking for work. Mercy identifies his scent as werewolf and, despite the danger, offers him food, a shower, and a temporary job. He tells her to call him Mac.

Mercy was raised by the pack of the Marrok, the wolf who rules all North American werewolves, in Aspen Creek, Montana. The Marrok is a deceptively mild-looking, centuries-old wolf named Bran. Mercy was sent there as an infant after her biological father, a Blackfoot man, died and her mother discovered a coyote pup in baby Mercy's crib.

Over the next few days, Mercy overhears Mac call his brother and pieces together that he was likely attacked by a werewolf, his girlfriend killed, and he survived the Change without understanding what happened. Before she can bring him to Adam Hauptman, the Alpha of the local Columbia Basin Pack and her next-door neighbor, two strangers corner Mac at the garage and try to force him to return, mentioning cages and drugs. Mercy shifts to coyote form and kills the werewolf; the human escapes. Adam arrives and takes charge. Elizaveta Arkadyevna, a powerful Russian witch on retainer to the pack, cleans the crime scene. Mac reveals that after being attacked in Chicago, someone resembling Leo James, the Chicago Alpha, sold him to captors who held him in a cage alongside other werewolves and subjected them to drug experiments. Adam takes Mac home.

The next morning, Mercy finds Mac's body on her front porch. She races to Adam's house and finds it destroyed: Two dead werewolves lie among the wreckage, and Adam, in wolf form, is nearly gutted, fighting a third attacker. Mercy shoots the wolf. Jesse, Adam's 15-year-old daughter visiting for Thanksgiving, has been kidnapped. Suspecting betrayal within the pack, since the attackers knew exactly when the pack meeting ended and where Jesse slept, Mercy loads Adam and Mac's body into her van and drives six hours to Aspen Creek.

In Montana, she secures Adam in the motel's reinforced safe room and tracks Bran into the mountains. She also encounters Samuel, Bran's firstborn son, a powerful wolf she loved as a teenager. When Mercy was 16, they planned to run away together, but Bran intervened, revealing that Samuel wanted her primarily because, as a walker, she could bear children who might survive the many dangers that had claimed Samuel's previous children over centuries. Mercy left without a word, and the old wound now reopens.

Before leaving Aspen Creek, Mercy meets Dr. Carter Wallace, a veterinarian who became a werewolf a year ago to survive bone cancer. Dr. Wallace confesses he cannot reconcile his identity as a healer with the wolf's craving for violence and is losing control. His son, Gerry Wallace, serves as the Marrok's liaison with lone wolves.

The group departs for the Tri-Cities with Samuel accompanying them. Adam recounts the attack and identifies one of the wolves as David Christiansen, an old army buddy Changed alongside him in Vietnam. Samuel explains that the tranquilizer used on Adam combined silver nitrate with chemicals to suppress werewolf metabolism; Mac died because months of captivity had made him hypersensitive to silver.

They hide Adam at the home of Warren, Adam's trusted third-in-command and the only openly gay wolf in the pack. Mercy visits Uncle Mike's, a fae bar, with Samuel, where her friend Zee, a fae mechanic, introduces an informant who reveals the local vampire seethe, or community, received an unusual payment from visiting wolves. Zee also gives Mercy an ancient enchanted dagger. Mercy's vampire friend Stefan arranges a meeting with the seethe's Mistress, Signora Marsilia, at her seethe, a walled hacienda with underground tunnels. The encounter turns dangerous: Marsilia, a centuries-old vampire, feeds from Samuel's neck. Mercy drives her off with a silver necklace that blazes with flame on contact. Marsilia's power flattens everyone in the room except Mercy, whose walker nature renders her immune to vampire magic. Stefan explains the situation was a trap designed to provoke war between vampires and werewolves. Marsilia provides an address where the visiting wolves paid tribute.

Adam recovers enough to lead his pack in a night raid on the address, but the house is empty. Lured away by a phone call, Adam is recaptured by the enemy. Mercy spends Thanksgiving Day developing a theory: Adam, the fourth most powerful werewolf in North America, is the only viable challenger to Bran, and someone opposing Bran's plan to reveal werewolves to the public wants Adam to replace him.

That evening, David Christiansen and his two grandsons appear at Mercy's home, having defected from the conspiracy. David reveals that Gerry recruited him to persuade Adam to challenge Bran. Gerry assembled a small army of lone wolves and mercenaries, but the operation spiraled out of control. David wants to help rescue Adam and Jesse. They learn Adam is chained with silver at an abandoned tree farm, and a Realtor's sign bearing the name John Cavanaugh, one of Adam's own wolves, confirms the pack traitor.

Mercy infiltrates the warehouse in coyote form and reaches Jesse and Adam. Using Zee's dagger, which cuts through metal and silver with supernatural ease, she frees them both. Adam suffers violent seizures from silver poisoning, but when his pack arrives outside, he draws strength from them and begins to heal. During the escape, a werewolf breaks Mercy's arm, but Ben, a member of Adam's pack recently transferred from London, intercepts the attacker. Mercy shoots the enemy wolf, recognizing him as the guard who hurt Jesse. As Warren takes Jesse to safety, Mercy senses a death spell bearing Adam's name, cast by Elizaveta's grandson Robert, who is secretly working with Gerry.

Mercy throws herself between Adam and the spell, and her walker nature absorbs the magic. Samuel reaches the rooftop and stops Robert. Adam, fully empowered, stands in the moonlight and uses the moon's call to summon every werewolf within range. Gerry, the last holdout, crawls to Adam and confesses his true motive: not opposing the public revelation but saving his father. Dr. Wallace's refusal to accept his wolf nature is killing him, and Gerry believed only a fight against Bran could unite Dr. Wallace's warring halves. Gerry's plan required Adam's death, Gerry's own execution by Bran, and Dr. Wallace's resulting rage, with Robert's witchcraft ensuring Dr. Wallace's victory. With the plan destroyed, Gerry asks only that his father never learn the truth. Samuel executes him.

In the aftermath, Bran takes Dr. Wallace for a final run in the Montana forest. The old veterinarian falls asleep against his Alpha and never wakes, his two natures at peace. Samuel stays in the Tri-Cities, moving into Mercy's spare bedroom. Adam takes Mercy to dinner, and they share a first kiss on her porch, cut short when Samuel opens the door with a knowing grin. Mercy refuses to let either man dictate her choices, promising she will not rush into a relationship until she understands her own heart.