Free Outcast by Erin Hunter Page A

oak tree.
    Awkwardly Lionpaw dipped his head to him. “Sorry,” he mewed. “But I can’t stand it when Berrynose acts like he’s Clan leader.”
    Stormfur let out a sympathetic murmur.
    â€œI know I shouldn’t let him get to me, but I can’t help it,” Lionpaw confessed. “Sometimes it’s the other apprentices too. Well, not Hollypaw, but the rest of them. I feel like I have to be the best all the time.”
    Part of him was horrified that he’d blurted all that out to a senior warrior. There was no reason for Stormfur to care about his problems.
    â€œWhy?” the gray-furred tom asked.
    â€œI don’t know why!” Lionpaw hesitated, thoughts battering his mind like a storm, then added, “I suppose I do know, really. It’s because I’m Firestar’s kin. There’s never been a leader like him, and every cat will expect me to be just as good because I’m related to him.”
    â€œAnd Tigerstar?” Stormfur prompted.
    Lionpaw dug his claws into the ground. How could Stormfur possibly know about his meetings with Tigerstar and Hawkfrost? “T-Tigerstar?” he gulped.
    Stormfur blinked at him. “I know what problems your father had. Brambleclaw was always afraid the Clan would never trust him, because they hated Tigerstar so much.”
    Lionpaw had never thought of that before. It was hard to imagine his father as a young cat, uncertain of his place in the Clan.
    â€œWhat was my father like?” he asked, padding up to Stormfur and sitting beside him in the comforting splash of sunlight. The fur on his shoulders began to lie flat again; he had almost forgotten the quarrel with Berrynose. “What wasit like when you went on the quest together?”
    â€œTerrifying.” Memory glowed in Stormfur’s amber eyes, fear and courage, humor and friendship, all at once. “I don’t know what was harder—traveling through unfamiliar, dangerous territory, or trying to get along with cats from other Clans. We all came back changed.” He paused to rasp his tongue over his shoulder, and then went on. “At first we seemed to argue all the time. But it was usually your father who had the best ideas, and pretty soon we realized that he was the natural leader among us.”
    â€œTell me what happened,” Lionpaw prompted.
    â€œFour cats, one in each Clan, had a dream telling them to go to the sun-drown-place,” Stormfur began. “They were supposed to listen to what midnight told them. None of us realized that Midnight was a badger.”
    Lionpaw nodded; he and his littermates had never met the badger who helped the Clans find their new home, but his mother had told them stories about her.
    â€œIt must have been really hard,” Lionpaw mewed, trying to imagine getting along with cats from other Clans. Okay, he’d been friendly with Heatherpaw, but suppose he’d had to cooperate with Breezepaw or warriors from ShadowClan?
    â€œIt wasn’t all bad,” Stormfur replied. His tail curled in amusement. “There was the time your mother got stuck in a Twoleg fence. She was spitting with fury, and she couldn’t move!”
    Lionpaw let out a little mrrow of laughter, imagining Squirrelflight stuck and furious. “Did my father rescue her?”
    Stormfur shook his head. “No. Brambleclaw was thinkingabout digging up the fence post, and I thought we might bite through the shiny fence stuff. Meanwhile Tawnypelt and Feathertail smoothed down your mother’s fur with some dock leaves and got her out that way.”
    â€œI wish I’d been there,” Lionpaw mewed.
    â€œI wouldn’t have missed it. Even though we were scared a lot of the time, or tired, or hungry, we all knew we were doing our best to help our Clans.”
    â€œAnd you became really good friends with my father.”
    Stormfur twitched his whiskers. “We weren’t all that friendly to begin