Wolf didn’t hesitate in bowling the intruding tom straight back out of the den. “When someone lays a paw on my mate or my kits is when I’m dead.” His deep snarl was a compliment to the series of heavy and ruinous blows he methodically landed to the other tom’s face; absolutely no remnant of his normally laidback self was present.
Wolf did exactly as he'd promised. With a storm of claws and a tempest of teeth, he'd unleashed more than enough paternal rage to send the disgruntled tom fleeing.
But when he turned back to return to his family, he found his path barred.
"Going somewhere?" The gray she-cat before him gave him a wicked sneer as flaunted muscles only found on the most esteemed cave-guards. "Deerpaw, get over here."
And suddenly she wasn't alone. An equally thickset little tabby tom marched to her side, but unlike his older ally, his expression was calm.
Calm, Wolf thought disgustedly.
Of all the expressions to wear while needless bloodshed is happening.
As the huge she-cat sprang for him, Wolf met her in mid-air. Each of his fully clawed paws connected with her corresponding shoulder and the two fell in a madly writhing bundle. Teeth met fur and blood met air. Both knew what they were fighting for and both were fighting for their
love with an acrimonious force to be reckoned with. Occasionally, claws would come for him from an entirely different direction- the young tom wasn't hesitating from joining in and making this fight even more uneven.
When Wolf came up and shrank back a few paces, he realized he was now fighting three cats. A slender, speckled gray she-cat with an air of absolute superiority crouched beside the tom; actually, she looked like she could easily be the adult female's kit.
The grown gray she-cat decided to lunge and throw Wolf back down then, smacking his head to the dirt at an angle that has his gaze rivet on his mate and
her attacker. Wolf let out an agonized screech and writhed spastically, losing sizable chunks of his pelt to the infallible grip that kept him down. Perhaps she was aware of the situation beyond, because, no matter how he struggled, she managed to keep him pinned.
The heart-stopping scene before him having conceived real desperation, Wolf decided to try her mercy by putting his suspicions to words. "These are your kits?"
Unblinking yellow eyes met his. "Maybe."
"Then you know parenthood." Through his reddening vision, it was abundantly clear to Wolf that the heartless gray she-cat looming over Wish was clearly threatening his kits now.
His opponent had to speak through a mouthful of his shredded chest fur to get her retort out. Judging by her slitted eyes and widening grimace, she seemed
slightly reluctant to continue this discussion. "And?"
"Surely you're not going to keep me here while your leader goes after my own litter." Wolf was gasping to get his words out now; her grip on his throat was getting extreme. His head throbbed as his air supply was increasingly restricted and his eyes started giving him all sorts of weird interpretations of the world before him.
Those stark yellow irises continued to bore into his for so many indefinite heartbeats. "Oh, I will." Having abruptly released her death-grip on his throat, Brightclaw watched him gasp for air and writhe for freedom with grim satisfaction. She lifted a paw and ran it down his heaving flank caustically, as if giving him a comforting pat that went innocently awry when it started to coax blood up and outward. "Your kind took the love of my life away from me. Don't think I'll have any issue watching you suffer through your own loss."
Wolf stilled suddenly and lifted his throbbing head, his eyelids flickering as his dwindling hope drained out with his liberated blood. "And the Clans call
us the heartless among this society."
For the first time, Ivypaw let up her hurricane of whirling claws and fell back. Her eyes wandered away from the immediate confrontation and instead brought her attention to Rainstar and the new queen she was threatening.
What...how is this even...StarClan...
Deerpaw, meanwhile, darted forward to finish what his mother had started. He dug both sets of front claws into the largest wound on his side and began to rip the protectively clinging shreds of his pelt away. Wolf's blood was so violently freed that it
sprayed up into the frenzied apprentice's face, but he didn't slow his wild shredding. To him, this torture was the most ideal vengeance he could ever seek to exact.
You killed my father. You killed my father. You killed my father. You killed my father. You killed my father.
Hardly able to bear the agony of all the fierce intrusion to his body, Wolf's eyes rolled and he was once again an appalled witness of his perfect life's abrupt severing.
