Chapter 1:

The sun was just beginning to rise when Moonpaw left camp with the dawn patrol. Anticipation drove the lingering sleepiness from the apprentice, and she found herself having a light step despite how early it was.

"Excited, are we?" A voice meowed with amusement from beside her.

Turning, the she-cat found her mentor Redstripe. The tom's blue eyes echoed the amusement in his voice.

"A little," Moonpaw replied, ducking her head in embarrassment. This wasn't her first patrol, but it was the first dawn one she'd been on. And all the interesting stuff seemed to happen during the dawn patrols, or so she had heard.

"I promise it's not as interesting as Quilfur claims," the warrior told her.

Quilfur was the only elder in Fernclan currently, and was well known for his stories. Something Moonpaw would admit she enjoyed hearing. Especially the one that had happened seasons ago, involving two cats from different clans who had fallen in love…

Mentally shaking her head, the pale grey she-cat glanced at her mentor. "So what exactly does happen on the dawn patrol?"

"What happens on every patrol," the tom answered. "We mark the border, report anything necessary back to Blossomstar…" he continued, letting her fill in the rest. "Come on, we're falling behind."

Picking up her pace, the apprentice followed Redstripe the few fox-lengths it took to rejoin the rest of the patrol, none of which paid them any attention thankfully.

. . .

Redstripe was right- dawn patrol wasn't all Quilfur had made it out to be. Moonpaw felt somewhat ashamed that she still easily believed the elder's stories. She'd been an apprentice for a few moons by now, for Starclan's sake! Far beyond the age when it would be acceptable to believe everything the elder said. But dawn patrol wasn't without it's perks- she got to explore more of the territory, and get used to the scent of the other three clans.

"We should probably bring something back for the fresh-kill pile," Nightleaf, the leader of the patrol said after they had finished marking the Oakclan border. Moonpaw perked up at that- she had always preferred hunting patrols to border patrols.

"I'll be nearby," Redstripe murmured as the patrol dispensed to hunt.

Standing perfectly still, Moonpaw listened intently, doing her best to filter out the typical sounds of the forest. She heard movement coming from undergrowth a few fox-lengths away and, dropping into a hunter's crouch, silently crept towards it to investigate further.

Upon closer inspection, she recognized the creature as a rabbit- and a very plump one too. Running through the training Redstripe had given her, she took a few seconds to formulate the best plan on how to catch it. A few seconds too many, it turned out, for the wind suddenly shifted downwind, alerting her prey to her presence.

The rabbit tore off through the undergrowth, and Moonpaw gave chase, knowing its size would make it slower than usual rabbits. Her mind was so focused on it that she didn't even realize the rabbit was leading her towards the far end of the border with Oakclan, which had a pile of rocks infested with adders.

Redstripe's shout of "Moonpaw!" brought the apprentice out of her narrow-minded pursuit and had her skidding to a halt a few mouse-lengths away from the rocks. And right in front of her, it's beady eyes staring directly at her, was a baby adder.

Frozen, she could only stare, petrified, as the snake reared its tiny head preparing to strike…

And then something, or someone, was barreling into the grey she-cat, knocking her out of the way.

Breathing heavily, she glanced up at her rescue and found an unfamiliar pair of ice blue eyes staring down at her. The eyes belonged to a jet black tom who couldn't be that much older than her, whose scent she was now able to identify as belonging to Oakclan. An apprentice from a rival clan had quite literally saved her life.

The hiss of the baby adder broke her out of her trance, and the tom leapt off of her, grabbed her by the scruff, and began dragging her away from the adder rocks until she recovered enough to remember how to move. Twisting out of the apprentice's grip, she ran a few fox lengths alongside him until they were far enough away from the rocks.

"It didn't bite you, did it?" The Oakclan apprentice asked, spinning around to face her.

"No," she told him, suppressing a shiver as she realized how close she'd come to dying. There was no cure for an adder bite, and it was well known that the younger the adder, the deadlier it was. "Thanks to you."

The tom shrugged. "It was what any regular cat would do if they saw someone running headfirst into danger like a mouse brain."

"Clawpaw!" A sharp yowl cut off any response Moonpaw may have given. On Oakclan's side of the border, a dark brown tom appeared. "Get back here, now!"

The other apprentice looked at her for a few more seconds before bounding back over to his side of the border. A few words were exchanged between the two—words that appeared very heated from where the she-cat was standing, but too low to actually make out—before the warrior lashed his tail angry and stalked off further into Oakclan's territory. Clawpaw followed.

She stood there for a bit longer, letting everything sink in, before she realized she needed to find the rest of the patrol. Redstripe had to be worried sick about her, being the over protective mentor he was.

But Moonpaw still found a part of her wandering back to Clawpaw; why would a tom from a rival clan put his own life in danger to save hers? She certainly knew there were quite a few cats who wouldn't do that, so why did he?