Darkest Night

Suddenly, paws slammed into his side. A flurry of russet fur caught his eye as he staggered sideways. The smell of kittypet washed over him. Instinctively, he lashed out, hooking thick folds of pelt, but his attacker was bigger and tugged easily free before swiping Alderheart’s cheek with a hefty blow. Pain scorched through Alderheart’s head as he felt claws rake his flesh. With a yowl he hit out blindly, gasping as another powerful blow knocked him off-balance. He fell and felt the weight of the other cat pin him to the ground. Thrashing his hind legs, he tried to wriggle free, but the kittypet held him fast. Jasper! He recognized the pelt and the scent now. Rage swelled in his chest as he tried to fight the tom off.

“So you have bad-tempered cats in your Clan, do you?” Jasper sneered, looming over Alderheart, pressing him into the earth. “Are they as bad-tempered as this?” Jasper lifted a wide paw and began to swing it toward Alderheart’s muzzle.

Alderheart braced himself for pain, furious at being so helpless.

But the blow didn’t land, and suddenly, the weight lifted from his chest. Alderheart scrambled to his paws, confused. Had Jasper just been trying to scare him? Then he heard a yowl and saw a flash of Sparkpelt’s orange fur. Jasper staggered as Sparkpelt lunged at his forepaws and knocked them from under him. As he collapsed onto his chin, she reared and thumped his flank with her paws. He rolled onto his side, his hind legs churning frantically. Sparkpelt hopped clear of the kittypet’s flailing claws and grabbed Jasper’s throat from behind. She jerked his head backward and hissed in his ear. “If my brother tells you we have bad-tempered cats in our Clan, you’d better believe it.” She sliced her claws along his throat, not hard enough to draw blood, but tugging out fur. Then she let him go.

Jasper leaped to his paws and faced Sparkpelt and Alderheart, his eyes flashing with shock. As he backed away, Alderheart felt relief flood him, and yet his pelt prickled with embarrassment. Medicine cat or not, he should have been able to defend himself from a kittypet.

Sparkpelt hissed at Jasper, and the russet tom turned and fled. “So brave!” she yowled after him. Purring with amusement, she turned to Alderheart. “Are you okay?”

He ran a paw over his cheek. It was wet with blood and it stung, but the cuts didn’t feel deep. “I’ll be fine.” He met her eye, feeling hot with shame. “Thanks.”

She shrugged. “It was nothing.”

Nothing? She’d just fought off a tom nearly twice her size. Alderheart hadn’t even been able to defend himself. Was she trying to rub it in?

Alderheart headed upslope.

Sparkpelt hurried after him. “Where are you going now?”

“Home,” he mewed curtly. “Have you been following me?”

“Of course I’ve been following you.” Sparkpelt fell in beside him. “You slunk out of camp like you were up to something. I wanted to know what. And it’s a good thing I did. That cat would have shredded you.”

“No, he wouldn’t,” Alderheart snapped. “I was just planning my next move.”

Sparkpelt didn’t respond. Instead she changed the subject. “Why did you come here?”

“Medicine-cat stuff,” he answered. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me.”

Alderheart kept walking. He felt mean. She’d just saved him and he was acting ungrateful, but he couldn’t shake the embarrassment from his pelt. Was she going to tell their Clanmates that she’d had to rescue him like a kit?

Sparkpelt blocked his path. “What’s wrong?” She gazed into his eyes anxiously. “Are you annoyed with me?”

Thoughts flashed like shooting stars through Alderheart’s mind. Where should he start? She had wanted SkyClan to go back to the gorge after he’d spent moons finding them. She’d been so busy flirting with Larksong like a feather-headed apprentice that she hadn’t even noticed that Alderheart had hardly spoken to her in a moon. And now she had totally humiliated him and didn’t even realize it. He glared at her. “What’s wrong with you?” he snapped. “We were always close. Now I feel like I hardly know you!”

“We still are close, aren’t we?” Hurt flashed across Sparkpelt’s intense green gaze. “I know I’ve been kind of distracted lately with Larksong.”

“Kind of?”

“Is that what’s bothering you?” Sparkpelt blinked at him.

“Not exactly.” Alderheart didn’t want to sound dumb. “But you haven’t noticed anything! You didn’t care how I felt about SkyClan. Or that I’ve been worried about the prophecy or that it might be embarrassing to need saving from a kittypet! You’re always so sure of yourself—you act like everything you do is okay, and sometimes it’s not okay!”