𝐿𝙸𝙶𝙷𝚃 𝐼𝙽 𝒯𝙷𝙴 𝒮𝙷𝙰𝙳𝙾𝚆𝚂 ─── 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘮𝘰𝘰𝘯 4.

𝐁𝐎𝐍𝐔𝐒 𝐒𝐂𝐄𝐍𝐄 | 𝐍𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓𝐒𝐇𝐀𝐃𝐄

Nightshade reluctantly held back a growl that rose in her throat as she watched the group of FrostClan cats leave. She couldn't help but keep glancing at the stream. The stream was stained red from Dawnsplash's blood. The ginger-and-white she-cat's body had been 'buried' under a pile of leaves and dirt, close to the forest.

Nightshade sprang out of her shelter when the FrostClan cats were out of sight and bounded over to the stream, leaping over the water and blood to get to the other side. She uncovered Dawnsplash's body and finally let out a rather loud, frustrated growl. "That was my job!" she hissed. "I was supposed to kill her. I was supposed to be the one to watch the light die from her eyes. I wouldn't have gotten myself killed!" Fury pulsed through her, throbbing through her paws and in her head. "I knew I shouldn't have trusted you," she muttered, clasping her jaw around Dawnsplash's scruff and dragging her bloodstained and drenched body back toward where they had originally met, in an open yet enclosed space close to the forest. She let go of Dawnsplash and just stared at her body for a few moments.

"That was my only chance to do what I've wanted-needed-to do since forever ago." Then she sighed. "But I guess you do deserve a proper burial. What did they think they were doing, being okay with having to carry Moonclaw's dead body back to camp but not yours? That traitor doesn't deserve anything noble or formal," she explained, mostly to herself, as she dug a hole in the ground, wide enough and deep enough to put Dawnsplash in. "But I guess . . . I guess it makes sense. She wasn't a part of their Clan. You were. But she helped the attempt to kill them off!"

Then Nightshade stopped when she realized that there was a small part of her that wanted to say goodbye to Moonclaw. Even if they never had any sort of loving bond-not counting the fake one, of course-there was some sort of affection that they shared, even after everything. Nightshade still craved being the reason for Moonclaw's assassination, but at the same time, there was something intimate between them. Grief lingered in Nightshade, but she pushed it away.

She fastened her teeth in Dawnsplash's scruff and dragged her into the pit that she created. She climbed out of the pit and sat down next to it. As angry as she was at Dawnsplash, she still had to acknowledge the grief that had welled up inside of her. The friendship that they had created, even though their goal was not at all a good one. To Nightshade it was, but to everyone else, it was not.

Nightshade sighed and began to throw the dirt that had piled up back inside the pit. When it was all back in, she made sure it was flat and looked like it hadn't been dug up before. But then, hesitantly, pushing the gentle words from her mouth, she murmured, "You will be missed, Dawnsplash."

The FrostClan cats would say, "May you find peace in StarClan," but those delusional mouse-brains hadn't gotten the hint that StarClan wasn't real. Maybe they would be saying that at their camp, where Dawnsplash's body was absent. Maybe they would treat her death like prey's. Like nothing happened.

Nightshade let out a noise that sounded like a growl mixed with a scoff. "What do they know? They'll still remember you. I know they will. Especially that . . . your killer. And if you see Moonclaw wherever you will go next, tell her that I'm still after her, dead or alive. She won't-can't-hide from me. Not now, not ever."

For a moment, the words felt bitter on her tongue, and there was some sort of churning in her stomach when she finished speaking. She dug her claws into the earth, her mind wandering to her apprenticeship when she first volunteered for the job. She remembered the first time the words, "I love you," slipped out of her mouth when speaking to Moonclaw. She was supposed to fake it, not turn it into real romance!

Every day since she took the job, she told herself, Don't go soft, because she was a MoonClan warrior, incapable of love for a traitor. Only capable of mass murder and destruction. Only capable of succeeding in wiping out FrostClan with the rest of her Clan.

She turned around and left, a sinking, despondent feeling returning to her. Her first target was gone, but there was still a second. A liar and a traitor. Her kin, but not her kin at all.

And she knew where they were.

And they would never see it coming.