The forest was especially lovely this morning. When he looked out over the territory from his branch, he saw nothing but a dappled and sun-drenched expanse of color, bright gold and orange spattered upon the mist, bright as poppies. The forest floor was overgrown and feral, with arching ferns and thick moss, swaths of snowdrops glistening with dew. The way he loved it most.

Day turned to sunset turned to night. The familiar clutter of branches and leaves surrounded them. He felt comfortable here. Safe, even. Dove gray, down-feather fur brushed his, and put his head down with a languid sigh. This felt like coming home.

“Dawnclaw.” Iris. He didn’t know why, but the way she said his name made him feel the way too many fermented berries did. “Do you ever think about it?

“Hm?”

“What if this was always us?”

“This?” He opened his eyes to find hers, silvery blue and eerily sharp in a way he’d grown fond of.

“All of this.”

Stars, the way she said it. Like it was a question she truly wanted to know the answer to. Or maybe it was his own question. Fear clenched in his stomach — the fear that he hadn’t made himself deserving of this, yet. The fear that when he loosened his claws to give her whatever he kept locked away, it would not be something worth taking.

“I think about it,” he whispered, and let his eyes shut again.

Somewhere, in the back of his mind, it had become true. It was becoming a dream so vivid that he knew every detail. The way her muzzle might look peppered in white with age one day. How much bigger he would need to make a nest to fit two. He knew the way she would sound when she called her kit’s names. He suddenly wondered at the way their features would look combined in a litter, the cadence of their voices.

He swallowed hard, but she curled up against him, so that he all but enveloped her. And whatever fear he felt in thinking of such a thing as this, a thing that would be so painful to lose, was drowned out by the affection. How silly of him, he thought, to ever have been afraid of this.

But then, his eyes opened. And all around down below, where there had once been flowers and dew and moss, there now was only blood and piles of corpses. Where Irisfrost’s form had been, there was now only a cold nest.

Dread fell over him. Dread and horrible regret.

He surged to his paws and scrambled down the tree, clumsy, searching for her. She couldn’t leave him. He hadn’t told her the most important truths. He hadn’t given her his dream to share. There was so much she needed to know.

And he could not lose her.

He could not lose her.

He ran through the carnage of what was once their camp, blood soaking his paws, through his pelt, hot on his skin. He recognized faces, frozen in anguish in death. Hailstar. Duskfang. Flickerheart. Spottedpaw. He’d done this, hadn’t he? He had done this.

He roared her name.

But she was already gone.



When Dawnclaw jerked upright, he did it so clumsily that he nearly tumbled out of his nest, and he had to claw at the branches to keep from falling to the forest floor below. Panic was overwhelming, but it ebbed as reality came back to him in pieces. There was no dead battlefield below. His clanmates lived. Irisfrost, she was safe, she—

As he caught his breath, his brow creased. What kind of dream had that been? He set his eyes on her, a single branch away. The sun was just barely beginning to rise, catching on the edges of her fluffy coat like it was shining behind a cloud. When he breathed, he seemed to be breathing around a knot in his chest, like a weaver had twisted up his heart into a new shape.

He rose and shook out his pelt, preparing to wake her. They had to set out early if they wanted to catch a dawn patrol on the other side of the border. Today, they would journey to the Kingdom, and he sent a prayer to StarClan that they would find anything to point them to her kits.



Silence was comfortable with Irisfrost. They padded softly through the Misty Forest, toward the towering mountains behind the Moon Cave and the Stonemark. He commented with soft conversation once in a while on the curiosity he had about traveling into the mountains, or, should the need arise, beyond them. Or that he was optimistic that StarClan was on their side. He would say that even if the Kingdom cats didn’t believe in StarClan, they appeared to honor a code like theirs—respecting their borders and, he hoped, respecting life as a whole. Surely they would want to help find missing kits.

The terrain changed, and the trees thinned, the ground sloping upward. Soft moss, pine needles, and leaves became dry lichen on loose stone, treacherous for those who didn’t know how to navigate mountainous terrain. He grew up with ground like this under his paws, and Dawnclaw was happy to give Iris pointers as needed in changing her balance to make up for the unreliable footing as they climbed.

Finally, at a flat spot on the slope in the shade of a few pines, border markers were easy to scent.

”We should stop here, wait for a patrol to come by,” he said, and turned to her. The sun was climbing, catching on her silvery hues, and he had to make himself take another breath when his tried to stop short.

’Do you ever think about it?’

I guess he fucking did now. He needed to distract himself.

”This is a good opportunity to practice,” he said, flicking his tail. ”Anything can go wrong just the same way things can go right. You’ve never fought on terrain like this.” He planted his paws in the sparse, fresh grass between the stones. Mountain wind ruffled his short pelt as he positioned himself into the right stance. He’d been teaching her different movements. Each position could move easily into a strike or defense. He gave her a casual, crooked smirk with a daring gleam in his eye. ”If you can beat me this time, I’ll take your overnight guard duty assignments for the next moon.”