Beloved

Beloved, matriarch of the Hunters, is the greatest human enemy of the unicorns and is the main antagonist of the series. She is the great ancestress of Cara Diana Hunter and the rest of the Hunters with the sworn goal to kill each and every unicorn.

When Beloved was very young, she became deathly ill, and her father ventured into the forest with her on a quest to obtain a unicorn's horn. One day, he left her in a clearing while he continued his search. A unicorn named Whiteling smelled Beloved and her illness and came to her in hopes to heal it. As he was doing so, Beloved's father returned and mistook the unicorn's benevolent heart-piercing as a movement of killing. He angrily shot Whiteling in the heart with an arrow just as Whiteling pierced Beloved's heart with his horn. When Whiteling threw his head up, the tip of his horn broke off and lodged in Beloved's heart. She was both wounded by the piece of horn and healed by its magic. Beloved's father and Whiteling fought to the death, right in front of Beloved, and she vowed to destroy all the unicorns to avenge her father's death and the pain that she constantly felt in her forever wounded, constantly healing heart.

In the Last Hunt, Beloved enters Luster with her Hunters. During the final battle, Beloved states that only the one being in whom both lines of Unicorn and Hunter are merged can kill her. She thinks that Cara (the aforementioned being) is dead, but upon learning that Cara is both alive and now a unicorn, she angrily insists that Cara put her out of her misery. Cara instead decides to heal her, and does so successfully, allowing Beloved to die in peace.