Emma Stonetree's father is missing. Worse yet, her uncle's gone too, leaving her and her two cousins, Jasper and Jade, floundering for an explanation. All Emma can think of are their fathers' stories-tall tales of magic, mystery, and a whole host of shifter races. Stories she might not have believed, if not for her own research into the matter-research that hardly prepares her for the trials of magic she and her cousins will endure as they set off that Midwinter's night to discover their roots. Nor does it prepare the three for what they find on the other side of the mystical portal their fathers disappeared into: the ursa, a fertility-focused race of bear shifters, with customs that defy their human sensibilities. Except the trio swiftly learn they aren't really human either, and once inside the ursa Sanctuary, they are just as bound by ursa laws as the earth is bound by the seasons. Emma and her cousins must make a choice: accept their legacies as ursa royalty, accept the love they find inside the sanctuary, or reject their passions and retreat to their safe, mundane lives, never to return to the realm they were meant to inherit.