Her mentor’s stern gaze suddenly softened. “No need to be nervous,” she meowed cheerfully. “You’re an excellent hunter, and hedgehogs will fly if you don’t pass this assessment.” With that she turned and rapidly disappeared among the ferns.

Twigpaw stared after her. Since her return to ThunderClan, she had felt that Sparkpelt didn’t like her much, and hadn’t wanted to be her mentor. Now she was heartened by Sparkpelt’s praise, and her confidence flowed back like a stream released from the ice of leaf-bare.

I can do this!

Parting her jaws to taste the air, Twigpaw picked up the scent of vole, and located it underneath a nearby holly bush. She fell into the hunter’s crouch, then crept forward until she was close enough to pounce, and she killed the vole with a swift bite to its neck.

“Thank you, StarClan, for this prey,” she murmured.

The easy catch made Twigpaw feel even more confident. Gazing around her at the sunlit forest, glowing with the reds and golds of leaf-fall, she felt energy filling her like rain filling up a dip in the ground.

“I’m going to enjoy this,” she mewed aloud.

Sunhigh was approaching, and as Twigpaw waited for her mentor to return, she felt satisfied with her hunt. She had caught several more pieces of prey, scratching earth over them until she was ready to carry them back to camp.

Now Twigpaw spotted a blackbird that had alighted on an ivy-covered tree stump in a clearing just ahead of her. Making sure that her tail was low and still, she stalked carefully toward it.

At the last moment, the blackbird took off. Twigpaw leaped, remembering the trick Sparkpelt had shown her for hunting birds, and aimed her body above where she could see the blackbird. She intercepted it easily, and landed with the bird in her jaws.

Just as Twigpaw turned, carrying the blackbird, she heard the rustling sound of something racing through the undergrowth. Dropping her prey, she picked up the scent of rabbit, and not just that.

There’s something else. Twigpaw drew in a deep breath to taste the air. Finpaw’s scent, too!

A heartbeat later, the rabbit shot out of a bank of ferns and raced across the clearing toward Twigpaw. Finpaw was hard on its paws. The rabbit let out a squeal of terror as it spotted Twigpaw right in front of it, and it veered aside, but Twigpaw was too fast for it. With a massive leap, she slammed a paw down on its hind legs, while Finpaw pounced on its shoulders and bit its throat to kill it.

“Great catch!” A voice came from behind Twigpaw.

She turned to see Larksong emerging from the undergrowth with Sparkpelt just behind him.

“You’ve both hunted very well,” Larksong continued.