Seattle police detective John Kanin's search for his vanished girlfriend, Ruby Cates, brings him to the small Pacific Northwest town of Wolf Lake. There he becomes embroiled in a local power struggle and discovers that something — a force ancient and mystical — exerts an irresitible control over the people of the town.

Kanin learns that an affliction known as "the Changing" kills a surprising number of teenagers in Wolf Lake every year, and confers tremendous status and privilege on those who survive it. But when he tries to figure out exactly what the Changing is, he runs afoul of the townspeople and incurs the wrath of Sheriff Donner.

An accident involving a tanker truck exposes one of Tyler Creed's schemes to Sheriff Donner, sparking a violent confrontation. Meanwhile, Sherman Blackstone has a strange way of helping John Kanin find his missing girlfriend: He gives the already flu-sick detective a bowl of chicken soup laced with a powerful hallucinogen.

A local woman's serial-killing spree puts the entire town on edge, while the collapse of Willard Cates due to health problems ignites a struggle in the wolfen community to determine who will be the pack's next Alpha Male.

A rapist from within the town's wolfen community tries to hide behind the human justice system, because among the wolves the penalty for rape is instant death. Meanwhile, Ruby is told by her father, the pack's Alpha Male, that if she doesn't agree to marry Tyler Creed, her true love John Kanin will be killed.

Willard Cates, the town's Alpha Male, is murdered, intensifying the clandestine struggle to determine who will be the next leader of the pack.

Sherman Blackstone spins an outlandish tale for three inquisitors who want to know what happened when the town selected its new leader of the pack. He regales them with every grisly detail — but is his story really just a pack of lies?

Ruby searches for a way out of her forced marriage to Tyler Creed, while a disfigured and haunting young woman named Lenore takes John Kanin hostage in the cabin he has rented from Sherman Blackstone.

A self-styled monster-hunter rescues Ruby, in her wolfen form, from poachers. But he's not acting out of altruism: He plans to videotape her transformation back into human form and release it on the Internet. Elsewhere in the town, Sophia Donner is on the brink of the Changing, which will either kill her or empower her. Meanwhile, Sheriff Donnner clashes with John Kanin, who discovers a vital clue to Ruby's whereabouts — and to the identity of the person responsible for her sudden disappearance from his life months earlier.