“Do you think we ought to start moving the cats into the tunnels?” he asked Leafpool.

She hesitated for a moment, then shook her head. “Bramblestar will give the order if he thinks the storm is bad enough,” she replied. “Meanwhile, all we can do is wait and see.” She flinched at another growl of thunder that sounded as if a gigantic cat was crouched at the top of the cliff. “Maybe we’d better move Briarlight, though,” she added. “She’ll be harder to move if the weather gets any worse.”

“I’ll see to it,” Alderheart mewed.

He pushed past the bramble screen once more and stared up at the sky. Rain swept across the camp, driven by the wind, and as Alderheart gazed upward, he flinched at another crackling claw of lightning.

Is this the storm? he wondered. The storm that the dark sky must not herald?

A weight of apprehension gathered in Alderheart’s belly. He couldn’t help thinking that maybe Leafstar’s gesture of letting Sleekwhisker and Yarrowleaf stay in SkyClan was not enough. Perhaps we should have done more to revive ShadowClan, like Twigpaw said—and perhaps we should have tried harder to bring RiverClan back among us.

Bracing himself for the cold and wet, Alderheart dashed out into the storm and headed for the warriors’ den. The rain had turned the dusty earth of the camp into mud that splashed up into his belly fur as he pelted across the open space. Sticking his head through a gap in the brambles that lined the walls of the den, Alderheart saw his Clanmates curled up in their nests, buried as deeply as possible in moss and bracken to avoid the chilly drops of rain that penetrated the roof.

“Wake up,” he meowed. “I need two of you to come and help me move Briarlight.”

“I will,” Sorrelstripe volunteered immediately.

Ambermoon rose to her paws and shook off the scraps of bedding that clung to her pelt. “And me.”

Together the two she-cats brushed past Alderheart and raced across the camp to the nursery. Alderheart followed.

At the entrance to the nursery Twigpaw was crouching, peering out at the sky. “Are you as worried about this as I am?” she asked, as Alderheart slipped into shelter and stood shivering.

“Maybe,” Alderheart responded, his voice a bit sharper than he had intended.

It was less than a half-moon since Twigpaw had come back from sneaking off to SkyClan camp, excited at the idea the two of them had come up with, to persuade Tawnypelt to become the leader of a rebuilt ShadowClan. Sparkpelt and Bramblestar had both been furious with Twigpaw.

It sounded like Tawnypelt and some of the other former ShadowClan cats were intrigued by the idea. But it wasn’t a ThunderClan apprentice’s job to challenge the leadership of other Clans.