Warriors #3: Shifting Shadows

Chapter 7

Lilypetal's POV

I couldn't sleep at all last night.

The whole time I had been thinking about who my father was, and the fact that Mistpelt had hidden it from me for my entire life, or at least since she had come back to the Clans. Right now, of course, I was furious with her, but I could to some extent understand why she would want to hide something like that from me. She was probably ashamed at the fact that Scourge was my father, and didn't even like hearing herself talk about him.

I already knew in my heart that I would be able to forgive her soon enough.

But still, every time the realization that Scourge was my father came back to me, my heart almost seemed to stop. It was so outrageous that it was hard to process. And I was joking when I had predicted that Mistpelt was secretly a savage murder, I recalled. Who would have ever thought that one of my parents actually was a savage murder, not my mother, but my father. What if no one trusts me anymore?

I wouldn't be the first cat in ThunderClan with a supposedly "evil" father. I had heard of how Firestar had had a difficult time trusting Brambleclaw back when he was a small kit, because of who is father was - Tigerstar. I was already praying to StarClan that the same wouldn't happen for me.

Brambleclaw does look a lot like Tigerstar, I realized. I could see how Firestar would be intimidated.

Firestar had worried for quite a while that Brambleclaw was going to follow the same dangerous path as Tigerstar, but he never did, and hopefully never would. I would never become a savage murderer like Scourge, I thought. No way in the name of StarClan!

Drifting away from my thoughts, I stood up in my nest in the warriors den and began to pad outside. I looked up to see that the sky was a bluish-pink and the sun was starting to fall to the bottom of the sky already.

It had been a fair low-key day for me, which was probably for the best, considering everything that was on my mind at the moment. I had gone on the dawn patrol this morning, and then had come back to camp to find the hunting patrol bringing back fresh-kill. I had eaten a mouse, and then I went to the warriors den to take a nap, but I couldn't sleep again.

Now mentally and physically exhausted, I sighed and then began to scan my gaze around the camp clearing. Most cats were out on patrols, eating fresh-kill or sleeping in their dens, just like any normal day.

But the one cat that caught my eye was Goldenshine, who was slithering about and looking from side to side as if she was trying to sneak out of camp without being seen.

I narrowed my eyes at this sight. Hmm...

I quickly padded up to my daughter, feeling like I needed to intrude as soon as possible. "What do you think you're doing?" I asked Goldenshine. I mean, she had all the right to leave camp when she wanted now, but the fact that she didn't want any cat to see her was suspicious to me.

Goldenshine completely froze as I had approached her.

"Uh..." she murmured, hesitating a lot. "Just going out for an evening stroll, that's all."

"Really?" I meowed and tilted my head. Through Goldenshine's awkwardness and hesitation, I felt like she wasn't serious at all, not just from this encounter, but from how she had been acting previously.

I then reflected on my daughter's latest behavior as I watched how weirdly she was acting at the moment. She had actually been acting strangely all day. First off, she always looked like something was on her mind. Secondly, she had gone on a hunting patrol earlier in the day, and Sorreltail had told me after they got back that Goldenshine's hunting skills had been terrible, and she had been acting as daft as a newly-made apprentice. When she had tried to catch a mouse, she looked as if she had never hunted before in her life, and she missed it when it was practically at her paws.