“Wha’?” Mousefur woke with a start.

“These young ’uns want to bask,” Purdy explained.

The tip of Mousefur’s tail twitched, but to Lionblaze’s surprise she didn’t object. “I suppose so,” she muttered. “We’ll even leave the rocks to you, providing one of you brings a bit of fresh-kill to our den. I could just eat a good plump vole.”

“I’ll do that,” Honeyfern offered, bounding off to the fresh-kill pile.

Mousefur laid her tail on Longtail’s shoulders to guide him down from the rocks, and the three elders headed off toward their den under the hazel bush.

“Thanks!” Lionblaze called after them.

“You fell asleep and missed some of the story,” Purdy mewed to Mousefur as they retreated. “I’d better start it all over again. There was this mouse, see…”

Lionblaze and Berrynose climbed up onto the basking rocks, and Honeyfern joined them a few heartbeats later. The flat surface was warm where the elders had been lying, and bright yellow sunlight spilled down on it. Lionblaze stretched out and let the heat soak into his fur. I wish I could lie like this for ever, he thought, and never have to worry about anything again.

On the rock next to him, Berrynose and Honeyfern were sharing tongues and watching Millie’s kits playing in the clearing close by.

Berrynose bent his head close to the tabby she-cat’s ear. “We’ll have kits like that one day,” he purred.

Honeyfern looked up at him, blinking shyly. “I’d like that.”

Lionblaze was surprised at how gentle Berrynose sounded; he was used to the older warrior being a bossy nuisance, ordering around other cats if he thought he could get away with it. Maybe having Honeyfern as a mate would be good for him.

At least he might stay out of my fur.

The cream-colored warrior rasped his tongue over Honeyfern’s shoulder. “You’ll make a wonderful mother.”

Watching them together, a pang of loneliness gripped Lionblaze’s belly. Who is my mother? Why didn’t she want me? Closing his eyes, he wondered what she had been like, and whether she ever thought about the kits she had abandoned.

“Watch me! Watch me!” Blossomkit’s voice came from a little way across the clearing. “I can leap higher than any cat!”

“No, you can’t, I can!” Bumblekit argued.

Lionblaze opened one eye to see all three of Millie’s kits leaping and tumbling around, a couple of fox-lengths from the rocks where he and his Clanmates lay. Briarkit fell over and rolled so that she was next to a crack in the rock wall; leaping up, she balanced on her hind legs with her forepaws stretching up into the air.

“I bet you can’t do this!” she boasted.

In the same instant, Lionblaze spotted a long, dark shadow emerging from the rock behind the kit. It reared up against the gray stone, but Briarkit was too excited to notice. Lionblaze sat bolt upright.

Snake!

He bunched his muscles to spring, but Honeyfern was quicker. Leaping down from the rock, she bundled Briarkit out of the way. The snake arched its neck; before Honeyfern could move it struck down and buried its hooked fangs in her shoulder.