A Cruel Thirst

Carolina Fuentes wants to hunt the monsters that prey on her pueblo, the way her family always has. Her father has other plans: he wants her married and sent away from the danger. Then an attack on her family leaves them devastated, and the question of her place in the hunt gets harder to ignore.

Weeks later, Carolina comes across Lalo Villalobos, a young man who became a vampire while avenging his parents' deaths. He has run to a remote pueblo, where rumor says a secret exists that could undo what he has become. Carolina catches him feeding on an animal, not a person, and she hesitates. He does not match the creature she was raised to kill.

She spares him and offers to help him look for a way to make him human again. The choice sets her against what she has always been taught about hunters and monsters, and each step of the search tests those beliefs further.

The book is a young adult paranormal romance with a historical setting, built on Mexican folklore. The central pairing is a hunter and the vampire she was trained to destroy, so the tension between duty and trust drives the story.