Heartsong recap

Robbie Fontaine wakes in Caswell, Maine, serving the alpha of all and believing he has always done so, with several years of his life simply missing. The gaps do not add up, and when Kelly Bennett arrives insisting that Robbie is his mate and a member of the Bennett pack in Green Creek, Robbie's wolf recognizes what his mind cannot. He learns the truth: his memories were deliberately stripped by the witch Robert Livingstone, with the leadership's knowledge. Robbie leaves Caswell with the Bennetts, and his memories return in painful, disordered pieces on the way home to Green Creek. Rebuilding himself there is slow, and he has to choose the pack a second time rather than simply remember choosing it. Alongside him is Gavin, a wolf who never takes human form, who proves to be Robert Livingstone's son and Gordo's half-brother. Robbie and Kelly are finally mates, the pack is whole, and Livingstone remains at large; at the close, Gavin leaves Green Creek and Carter Bennett goes after him alone.

Previously: Ox Matheson grew up in Green Creek, Oregon, and was taken in by the Bennett family next door, who were werewolves. Their youngest son Joe claimed him as a boy. When the rogue alpha Richard Collins killed Thomas Bennett, Joe inherited his father's power and left with his brothers Carter and Kelly and the pack witch, Gordo Livingstone, to hunt Richard down; Ox held together everyone who stayed and became an alpha in his own right. Richard was eventually killed in Green Creek, along with Ox's mother, and a traitor inside the wolf leadership was exposed. Ox and Joe now lead the Bennett pack together as mates. Afterward, Gordo's father Robert Livingstone, a witch the Bennett alpha had once stripped of his magic and exiled, proved to be alive and carrying stolen alpha power, and sent packs of feral Omegas against Green Creek. Gordo confronted him, survived, and finally accepted Mark Bennett as his mate, but Livingstone escaped, and he took Robbie Fontaine with him, stripping out every memory Robbie had of Green Creek and the people who loved him.

Robbie Fontaine lives in Caswell, Maine, at the seat of the wolf leadership, working for Michelle Hughes, the alpha of all. As far as he knows this is his whole life, but several years are missing from it, and the explanations he is offered are smooth rather than convincing. He dreams of trees, of a house at the end of a dirt road, of a voice he cannot place. Caswell is comfortable and Michelle is kind to him, and the kindness has an edge of management to it. Also in Caswell is a witch of immense power, Robert Livingstone, who is treated as an asset rather than a danger, and whose interest in Robbie is more particular than a stranger's should be. Robbie is a wolf without a pack bond, which should be unbearable and which he has been told to accept as normal.

The story Robbie has been given keeps failing at the edges: dates that do not line up, people who look away, an instinct that pulls him west. He starts pressing for answers instead of accepting them. Then wolves out of Green Creek reach Caswell, and one of them, Kelly Bennett, tells Robbie flatly that he belongs to the Bennett pack, that they were together, and that his memory was taken from him rather than lost. Robbie cannot remember him at all. His wolf, however, reacts to Kelly with a certainty his mind cannot supply, and that gap between what he knows and what he feels becomes the thing he has to resolve. The confrontation makes plain that whatever was done to him was done in Caswell, with the leadership's knowledge.

Robbie chooses to leave Caswell with the Bennetts rather than stay in a life assembled for him. The journey west is brutal: his memories come back in fragments and out of order, carrying grief he has no context for, and he has to be told repeatedly who he was in order to believe it. Kelly refuses to push him and refuses to leave, and the two of them start again from nothing. Travelling with them, or near them, is a wolf who never takes human form and who will not be driven away, drawn in particular to Carter Bennett. Robbie is also forced to reckon with what he was doing in Green Creek in the first place, since he originally arrived there as the leadership's eyes rather than as a friend.

Back in Green Creek, Robbie has to find a place in a pack that remembers him far better than he remembers it. Ox and Joe take him back without conditions, Gordo is caustic and useful, and Elizabeth simply makes room. Being surrounded by people whose grief for him he cannot share is its own kind of isolation, and Robbie's recovery is uneven. The wolf who cannot shift stays with the pack, and his identity comes out: he is Gavin, Robert Livingstone's son and Gordo's half-brother, a wolf who was made rather than born and who has spent years unable to be a man. The pack's reaction is divided, and Gordo's most of all, since nothing that comes from his father has ever been harmless.

Robbie stops trying to become the person he used to be and decides to be the one he is now, which means choosing the pack a second time rather than inheriting the choice from his own lost memory. He and Kelly become mates. The pack, meanwhile, is finished with the leadership in Caswell: whatever the official story, Robbie's mind was dismantled under Michelle Hughes's roof, and no amount of diplomacy fixes that. Robert Livingstone is still at large with alpha power inside him and is no longer bothering to hide what he intends, and the pack braces for a confrontation it can no longer defer.

Robbie ends the book whole. His memories are his own again, he is mated to Kelly, and he belongs to Green Creek by his own decision rather than by anyone's arrangement. The pack has come out of the fight for him stronger, and its relationship with the wolf leadership is effectively over. Gavin, however, does not stay. Being Robert Livingstone's son in Gordo Livingstone's pack is a position with no comfortable shape, and he leaves Green Creek. Carter Bennett goes after him: alone, out of range of his alphas and his pack bonds, which is a dangerous thing for a wolf to do and which he does anyway. The Bennett pack closes the book intact and mated but short one brother again, with Robert Livingstone alive, powerful and moving toward whatever he has been building all along.

Robbie ends the book restored and settled: his memories are his again, he has chosen Green Creek rather than merely been returned to it, and he and Kelly Bennett are mates. The Bennett pack is intact and stronger for having gone into Caswell after one of its own, and the leadership's authority over it is effectively finished, since it was under that leadership's roof that Robbie's mind was taken apart. Gavin's identity is out in the open: he is Robert Livingstone's son and Gordo's half-brother, a wolf made rather than born, and he does not stay. He leaves Green Creek, and Carter Bennett goes after him, alone and outside his pack's bonds, which for a wolf is close to reckless. The pack is left with an empty place at its centre again, this time by choice rather than by theft. Robert Livingstone is still alive, still carrying alpha power, and is now openly working toward whatever he has been building, and the pack knows that the next fight will be one it starts rather than survives.