Hunter

Synopsis

Faith Marchal has spent her whole life learning to live with a countdown: an incurable heart condition that she and her parents have been fighting for years through clinical trials she can never get into. When she receives her fourth rejection in under a year, she walks out of the house and ends up, without meaning to, in Westfield Forest — the one place every child in the city has been warned about since they were small, the unofficial territory of Los Pantera, the criminal outfit that has controlled the north of England for a century, heirs to a local legend about a family that can turn itself into panthers.

There she witnesses an execution and is taken captive by Hunter, the youngest leader the gang has had in its entire history. Under Los Pantera's rules, Faith should die for what she has seen. Hunter, however, decides to let her live, setting in motion a relationship that neither of them is looking for or fully understands — first a veiled threat, then an attraction neither can contain.

As Faith returns again and again to Hunter's world, she uncovers the gang's internal structure: its initiation rituals, its hierarchy built on combat, its near-tribal laws, and the weight Hunter carries in holding together almost two hundred people. She also uncovers her own capacity for violence and for loyalty, to the point where she is proclaimed, without having sought it, the leader's official partner and, with that, the symbolic head of Los Pantera.

Meanwhile, a silent war between rival gangs — fed by internal betrayals and competing ambitions — escalates until Westfield becomes a theatre of open violence: what those inside call the Dark Age. Faith and Hunter must face not only enemies from outside, but the possibility that someone within the gang itself is behind every blow. In the middle of that war, Faith must decide whether she is willing to sacrifice her relationship with her family, her academic future and her own safety to stay by Hunter's side.

But the true limit of the story is not set by the gang war — it is set by Faith's body. Her illness advances in step with the violence closing in around them, and Hunter, determined not to lose her, sets a plan in motion that will force him to make the most extreme and final decision of his life.

Hunter is a dark romance built around two people who forge their bond in the worst possible place to do so, and it leaves an uncomfortable question open until the very last page: how much can you give for love when time is already running out. Contains graphic violence and explicit sexual content; recommended for adult readers only.

Machine translation, pending review.