Lost In The Shadows

Prologue
Birchleaf hissed at her medicine cat, face twisted into a snarl. "How can you say I'm having 2 kits?! I only wish for one!"

"Birchleaf." The medicine cat's voice was cold. "You do not decide how many kits you are to have. Honestly, I don't see what you're so upset about. Kits should be cherished by every breath you take. Being a mother is the greatest gift of all." He stared into the amber eyes of the she-cat in front of him, who was still growling defiantly.

Another tom slipped into the den, licking his mate's ear. "How many? There better be only one."

"Darkfur!" Birchleaf wailed. "There's two!"

"Two?!" The dark grey tom hissed in rage. He turned to the medicine cat. "Windheart, kill one immediately."

"I will not!" The medicine cat growled back. "I refuse to take an innocent kit's life, because the two of you can't love it as much as you love the other one. Both kits will be born. And both kits will survive. You both disgust me. Get out of my sight!"

The two cats rose, and padded outside, to a clearing in the middle of camp.

"Don't worry," Darkfur murmured. "We will only care for one kit. The other could be stillborn, for all I care. I love you, and that one kit, more than I love my life."

"What about the other?" Birchleaf asked.

"Oh, don't fret. The other kit will never succeed. At anything. It is a mistake, a kit that shouldn't have been born, and we will remind it of that forever."