Dawn

The monster’s roar made Squirrelpaw’s ears ring. She hurled herself among the RiverClan cats, reaching for an apprentice who was desperately trying to free himself from the mud. She plunged her teeth into his scruff to haul him out, and he raced away toward the rock.

“Thanks!”

Squirrelpaw looked up to see Stormfur watching her. He blinked gratefully and turned to yank another apprentice to its paws.

“My kit!” Dawnflower’s screech made Squirrelpaw spin around. One kit lay at the RiverClan queen’s paws. Another was racing panic-stricken straight toward a monster, too scared to see where he was going.

“I’ll get him!” Crowpaw lunged forward and grasped the kit in his jaws. Mud sprayed from his paws as he skidded back toward the outcrop.

Squirrelpaw scooped up the other kit and gave Dawnflower a fierce nudge. “Quick!” she hissed.

She reached the rock and bounded up, finding a shadowy crevice out of sight of the Twolegs. She fled along the gully with the kit swinging in her jaws until she emerged on the other side. Dawnflower shot out behind her, followed by Firestar and a stream of RiverClan cats, and finally Crowpaw emerged with the other kit. Dawnflower raced over and gratefully took the kit from him.

Squirrelpaw placed the other kit at her paws and looked around for her sister. “Leafpaw!” she called.

She was crouching beside Tallstar. The WindClan leader’s flanks heaved and his eyes looked wild with fear. “Hunted in my own territory!” he wheezed.

Leafpaw looked up when she heard Squirrelpaw’s call.

“Can you look at these kits?” Squirrelpaw asked. Leafpaw glanced uncertainly at Tallstar, but Cinderpelt appeared beside her.

“I’ll look after him,” she murmured.

Leafpaw hurried over and sniffed each kit. She pressed her ear against the chest of one and then the other. “They’re just scared and tired,” she concluded. “They’ll be fine.”

“Of course I’m fine,” squeaked one of the kits, a dark gray female. “That monster was never going to catch us.”

“Hush, Willowkit,” soothed Dawnflower. As she bent to wash the mud from her kits’ faces, the ShadowClan cats emerged from the gully.

“Is every cat with you?” Firestar called to Blackstar.

Blackstar nodded, too breathless to speak.

The Clans rested on the rocks for a moment, but another swath of churned-up moorland still lay between them and the grassy slope that led down to the meadows, and the Twolegs would be looking out for them by now. It wasn’t safe to linger too long near the monsters.

“We should stay closer together,” Firestar suggested. “Travel like a single Clan.”

“And who will give the orders?” Leopardstar demanded.

“You?”

Firestar shook his head. “That’s not important. I only meant it would be less dangerous if we were to stick together.”

“You have no idea where we’re going,” Blackstar argued.

“We have to trust the cats who’ve made this journey already, and each Clan has one of those. We can travel separately.”

“But you fell behind just now,” Firestar pointed out.

“RiverClan, too. We must stick closer together, at least while we’re near the Twolegs.”

Blackstar narrowed his eyes. “Closer together, yes,” he conceded. “But each Clan should follow its own leader’s orders.”

Squirrelpaw’s paws pricked with frustration. Fighting a bone-weariness that made her head spin, she gazed across the stretch of land between the rocky outcrop and the edge of the moor. There were yet more monsters in the distance, lumbering up and down like terrifying border patrols.

Brambleclaw padded up to her. “I’ve spoken to the others.”

His voice was low, and Squirrelpaw understood that by “others,” he meant Tawnypelt, Crowpaw, and Stormfur.

“We’ve agreed to keep to the outside,” he explained. “That way we can look out for trouble and help any cat who falls behind. Crowpaw and I will stay at the back. Stormfur will lead. You take one side, and Tawnypelt will take the other.”

Squirrelpaw nodded. “We’ve brought them this far—we have a responsibility to protect them,” he added, his eyes darkening with worry.

Squirrelpaw twined her tail with his. “We’ve done the right thing,” she whispered. “I’m still sure of that.”

“Are we ready?” Firestar yowled.

Slowly the cats gathered on the brink of the rocks, huddling close to their Clanmates. Only Brambleclaw, Crowpaw, Squirrelpaw, Stormfur, and Tawnypelt slipped away from their Clans to take up positions at the edge of the group.

Blackstar gave the order to move first, but Leopardstar, Firestar, and Mudclaw quickly followed, and the cats began to leap down from the reassuringly hard surface of the outcrop and back into the slippery mud.

They crept toward the monsters that guarded the edge of WindClan’s territory, keeping low and quiet. Squirrelpaw skirted one edge of the group, keeping her ears pricked for any unexpected Twoleg activity, as well as looking out for any cats falling behind.

Leafpaw fell in beside her. “Is everything okay?”

“I think so,” Squirrelpaw murmured.