Into the Wild (Warriors, #1)

by Erin Hunter

The forest had disappeared. He was inside a hot and airless kitchen, curled in his bed. Moonlight filtered through the window, casting shadows on the smooth, hard floor. The noise had been the rattle of hard, dried pellets of food as they were tipped into his dish. Rusty had been dreaming.

they would greet him with gentle words and caresses and welcome him onto their bed, where he would curl, purring, warm in the crook of a bent knee.

Rusty could feel spiked teeth pricking at his neck. He writhed and squirmed from whisker to tail, but he

Rusty’s head reeled. Bluestar seemed to be offering him the life he had lived so many times, and so tantalizingly, in his dreams, but could he live like that for real?

“Now Darkstripe,” Graypaw hissed to Firepaw under his breath, “is neither young, nor pretty. . . . ”