Winter Lost

The fourteenth installment in the Mercy Thompson series is set in a world where supernatural beings, including werewolves, vampires, shapeshifters, and the fae (magical beings drawn from European folklore), coexist uneasily with humans. Mercy Thompson Hauptman, a walker who can shift into a coyote and is the daughter of the trickster spirit Coyote, is mated to Adam Hauptman, the Alpha of the Columbia Basin Pack of werewolves in the Tri-Cities of Washington State.

The novel opens with Mercy reflecting on lingering damage from a previous encounter with the Soul Taker, a sentient ancient artifact that altered her magic and soul before being destroyed. The effects persist: constant headaches, overwhelming magical sensitivity, and involuntary psychic insight. The Columbia Basin Pack is also under pressure. The Marrok, the ruler of North American werewolves, has severed ties with them to prevent an interspecies war, leaving the pack isolated. Mercy has been working to heal internal divisions by taking resistant wolves on dangerous assignments to build trust.

Two threats converge early. Bonarata, the Lord of Night, a vampire who rules Europe and previously defeated Adam in combat, terrorizes Mercy with harassing phone calls, during one forcing her to listen as he kills a victim. Mercy hides her distress by dampening their mating bond, the supernatural emotional link connecting her and Adam. Meanwhile, at the fae-owned pub Uncle Mike's, Mercy notices a silver spider the size of an acorn that seems ancient and powerful, and receives a cryptic warning that "winter roads are treacherous, but necessary." That same evening, Adam calls to say Mercy's half brother Gary Laughingdog has appeared at their house.

Gary, a fellow child of Coyote, arrives unable to understand speech or recognize faces, processing information only through scent. After a violent confrontation, Adam subdues Gary, and the household places him in a silver-barred cage. Mercy touches him through the bars, and Gary recognizes her by smell, collapsing against her in sobs. Zee, Mercy's employer and a powerful fae known as the Dark Smith of Drontheim, identifies the magic as the work of the Jötnar, the frost giants of Norse mythology, and cannot break it without harming Gary.

Zee summons Ymir, a local frost giant, who confirms the spell belongs to his "name-brother" Hrímnir. Before departing, Ymir seizes magical control of Mary Jo, a werewolf in the pack, to demonstrate his power over wolves. Adam draws on the pack bonds to break Ymir's hold in a dramatic display of Alpha authority. The encounter triggers a severe panic attack in Mercy, echoing her past trauma of having her will stolen.

Adam sends his second-in-command Darryl and pack member Auriele to handle a security crisis in New Mexico and accompanies Mercy to Montana, where Gary had been working near Looking Glass Hot Springs. On the mountain roads, wild magic saturating a massive storm nearly overwhelms Mercy, but protective runes drawn on the SUV block it. They encounter Hrímnir, first as a monstrous gryphon and then as a towering man in wolfskin furs. He declares that Gary stole his artifact, a silver lyre with turquoise inlay and wolf-head carvings, and refuses to lift the curse. Mercy proposes a bargain: she and Adam will retrieve the lyre from the resort, where sacred ground prevents Hrímnir from entering, in exchange for Gary's freedom. Hrímnir departs without agreeing.

At the resort, a converted sanatorium on the edge of a hot-springs lake, they find a building haunted by ghosts and occupied by guests stranded by the storm. The silver spider from Uncle Mike's reappears, and a hungry ghost attacks Mercy in the night; the spider destroys the ghost and tells Mercy that the Soul Taker's damage makes her a beacon for spirit predators. Liam Fellows, the night manager and a green man (a type of powerful fae), reveals the wedding's true purpose. Every 144 years, the eldest child of the Heddar family must marry on the winter solstice on sacred ground to renew a Great Spell keeping the monstrous hound Garmr bound, preventing Ragnarök, the cataclysmic end of the world from Norse mythology. Hrímnir created this spell. Dylis Heddar, the groom's mother, is a full-blooded fae who has been marrying her own descendants for generations, feeding on the spell's magic. Zane Heddar, the groom, is her great-great-grandson and the only legitimate heir. If the wedding fails, the spell's backlash will kill everyone at the lodge.

Mercy encounters Hrímnir alone at Gary's ranch, where he reveals his vow is irrevocable: Everyone remains trapped until the lyre is returned or all are dead. He suspects Ymir orchestrated the theft to trigger Ragnarök and promises Mercy aid whose implications she does not yet grasp. On her return, Garmr, the hound of Hel (the Norse underworld) given partial physical form, ambushes her. His bite passes through her flesh and catastrophically reopens the Soul Taker's wounds. Adam and Zane, who arrives as a great white stag, drive Garmr away.

Mercy wakes with her mind flooded by uncontrollable insight and realizes Hrímnir engineered Garmr's attack as his promised "aid," reopening her damaged perceptions so she could locate the artifact. She understands that Hugo, the lodge's elderly gardener, is actually Garmr in a temporary human body. Terrified of dying when the wedding would require him to resume his bound form, Hugo called Ymir months earlier and revealed the Great Spell, setting the crisis in motion. Coyote had sent Gary to steal the lyre before Ymir's hired goblin agents could, and Gary left it with Hugo for safekeeping.

When a lodge guest reports that the goblin siblings staying at the resort have been shot dead, Mercy sends Adam and the others to investigate and confronts Hugo alone. He confirms the details and draws a revolver. Mercy shoots him with Adam's gun, which she took from his holster earlier. Garmr manifests over Hugo's fallen body. Grandmother Spider, the ancient being who appeared as the silver spider, enters in her true form as an elderly Native woman named Asibikaashi and instructs Garmr to carry the lyre to Hrímnir. The storm begins to abate.

Grandmother Spider reveals she was brought to the region by the legendary witch Baba Yaga at Coyote's instigation to heal Mercy. At a stone pool by the lake, she weaves a cloth of red light, which the spirit of the lake enhances with white threads. Wrapped in the cloth, Mercy is healed of both the Soul Taker's damage and the injury to her divine spark, the inherited essence from Coyote.

Mercy wakes fully healed for the first time in months. When she opens her mating bond to Adam, he drops to his knees, overwhelmed. The wedding proceeds at dawn on the solstice beside the lake. Hrímnir plays the lyre from his cabin as the ceremony proceeds, and the Great Spell is renewed, binding Garmr for another 144 years. Gary later returns to Hrímnir's cabin and finds the artifact transformed from a lyre into a Celtic harp. The frost giant forgives him, and Gary admits he will eventually leave for someone else, implied to be Honey, a werewolf in the pack. Adam and Mercy drive home to find the pack intact. When Bonarata calls again, Mercy delivers a lengthy fake sales pitch in a Southern accent until the vampire hangs up, delighting Adam. The threat remains unresolved, but Mercy is whole again, and the story closes with Adam kissing her hand as they drive toward home.