#pinejump

Prologue

❦

“F-Foxgrove…” Piperstar trembled. “C’mon, wake up. You’re going to get better. We’ve dealt with worse! We always deal with worse.”

She pressed her head into her mate’s still fur, as if sheer force could restart a heartbeat. Her emerald eyes brimmed with disbelief.

“WAKE UP!” she yowled.

Nightfleck and the other medicine cats worked quietly, gently lifting the tiny, squirming bundles of fur that reached blindly toward their unmoving mother. But Piperstar didn’t see her kits. Not yet. All she saw was the emptiness where Foxgrove’s life used to be.

Nightfleck licked the blood from the grey-and-ginger pelt of one newborn, her motions automatic. She shoved her own grief into some locked place deep in her chest. The kits needed her now. And she could only mourn so much in one moment.

A flash of white fur burst into the nursery. Airtuft, Foxgrove’s elder sister. Her gaze swept the scene—the blood, the kits, the shattered leader. Her claws tore furrows in the nursery floor.

Nightfleck’s own claws twitched, desperate to lash something, anything, to keep her own grief from boiling over.

“Do they have names?” asked Airtuft hoarsely.

Piperstar lifted her head. Her eyes were wide, her teeth bared, her breath ragged. For a heartbeat, she looked like a stranger. Nightfleck had only heard that venom in her voice once before.

“They are her last gifts to the Clan,” Piperstar rasped. “We spoke of names. I-I know their names! I know Foxgrove as I know my own soul! Are you insinuating I do not know my own purpose? My own love?" Piperstar stalked forward. Her claws unsheathed. Her tail flicked toward each kit like a blade marking its target.

“Amberkit. Echokit. Frostkit. Pinekit.” Airtuft's gaze fell to the ground. Piperstar's expression held something new in it, a new intensity that Nightfleck only recognized in the most desperate of rogues.

Piperstar exhaled, but her gaze was no less deadly. She raised her head to the sky in a quiet declaration to all who might listen.

“May the Clans fear those who would harm Foxgrove’s legacy. For I do not carry the mercy of StarClan in me if they do.”

Nightfleck clutched the tiny kit closer to her chest, as if shielding her from the chill that bloomed in the nursery with Piperstar's words.

Please, she prayed, please protect us from where our leader’s grief may lead…