" Seth's Defender was parked up at the edge of the drive but there were no lights on insidethe farmhouse. With the idea of safe haven so close Gwen’s body had turned her pain receptors back on and at full volume. She could feel bruises rising beneath her skin and as she caught sight of her reflection in the kitchen window she saw that there was blood smeared across her neck from a toothmark just below her jawbone. She moved around the farmhouse. The french doors that led out onto what passed for Seth’s garden were locked but the back door was only on a latch. Gwen moved inside. The house was bitter cold..." After the deaths of her mother and brother on a hiking trip Gwen Gallagher escapes to the safety of her job as a wildlife ranger at the Wakewater Lake Nature Reserve. When an altercation with poachers leaves her needing to get out of town she is relieved to be headhunted onto an academic research project in Devon by her old University tutor Andy Guttridge. All too quickly Gwen discovers that Guttridge and his team are searching for the mythical big cats of the Devon moors and, far from wanting to study them are making money from hunting parties. Gwen suspects local farmer Seth Mason is providing the organic venison bait and determines to throw them all off the scent and keep this extra special wildlife wild. But her encounters with Seth begin to pull at her loyalties and logic and when Gwen finds that the animal she is tracking is much bigger and much wilder than even Guttridge has imagined she begins to wonder if she can trust anyone, even herself.