Thank you so much to everyone who reviewed! It really does motivate me to keep writing this :) Sorry also for the late update, I realised too late that it is, once again, coming up to exam time. Therefore, I probably won't be able to update again until the end of the year-ish.

Shadowedskies of LightningClan: Yeah, it will seem like that at first. But I assure you that the only real jerky toms in the Clan are Rainpaw and Duskclaw. The rest are fairly normal, although Frostkit might not see it at first.

Stormshadow3 (second review): Well, this is a romance story, after all!

Snowcrystal of ThunderClan: Thanks for your reviews! I think you might have meant Smoke x Frost?

- Six moons later -

"Look at who finally decided to join the big cats," a familiar voice sneered.

Frostpaw's eyes snapped up to glare at the cat who had walked in, as she held back a low growl. The blue-gray tom's face was twisted into one of mocking disgust, an expression which the orange apprentice was well used to seeing.

"I was tempted to stay in the nursery," Frostpaw replied, tone deadpan. "The kits' nonsense is more tolerable than your idiocy."

". . . And with her fancy words to hide behind to boot!" Rainpaw added, snickering slightly.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Frostpaw countered, not sounding apologetic at all, "is the word 'idiocy' to hard for you to understand? I'll dumb it down for you - you're an insufferable mouse-brain."

Rainpaw scowled at her, huffing loudly before stalking past her to his nest. The orange apprentice felt a surge of pride at his frustration. Take that, fox-heart. Her satisfaction dissipated, however, when another cat walked into the den.

"Hey Smokepaw, look at this!" Rainpaw called to the new arrival, gesturing to Frostpaw with his tail. "Frostkit seems to have gotten lost and found herself in the apprentices' den. Isn't that hilarious?"

Smokepaw, who had shuffled in with a blank expression on his face, suddenly started blinking wildly, raising his head to stare at both Rainpaw and herself. His eyes flooded with wariness as he surveyed the two, something which surprised Frostpaw. Smokepaw was rather peculiar, in her opinion. He had never really joined in with Rainpaw's incessant jeering, but he didn't seem to have the confidence to stop it either. He just watched, something which irritated Frostpaw. Her mother had always told her that the gray tom did that because he didn't care about her wellbeing (yet another one of the things that show that all toms are horrible, that she'll get hurt if she befriends one, and that she should keep to herself. Honestly, sometimes it seemed like Snowfeather never talked about anything else), and she suspected that the white queen was right.

"Uh, yeah, hilarious," Smokepaw finally muttered, hanging his head again and trudging over to his nest.

Rainpaw seemed satisfied with that answer, turning to direct a victorious smirk at Frostpaw. Unimpressed, she rolled her eyes at him exasperatedly. He's such an idiot.

"What's wrong, Smokepaw?" a voice asked blearily, drifting out from a particularly dark corner of the den. "Training not go so well?"

Nightpaw. Now she was . . . confusing. The black she-cat hadn't really changed much since they were kits; sleeping every chance she got, never really seeming to be fully awake. Despite this, however, Frostpaw was unnerved by how much she knew. During their infrequent talks, Nightpaw mentioned things about cats that she couldn't possibly have been told. For example, the orange apprentice remembered the time when Nightpaw had casually named Sandstar as the father of the Clan's latest additions. When asked how she knew, she had replied that it was obvious through watching both the kits' behaviour and their mother's interactions with ShadowClan's leader. Before then, Frostpaw had written the black apprentice off as harmlessly apathetic, but now she wasn't quite sure.

"Yeah," Smokepaw sighed, flopping down into his nest. "I kind of feel bad for Redpool. I mean, I couldn't even get the mouse that be practically placed in my paws!"

"Don't be so hard on yourself," Nightpaw scolded lightly, amber eyes flashing in the darkness. "You just need some more practice." Suddenly, she shook her head, a smile returning to grace her muzzle. "But enough about that. You should have seen Dapplefrost this morning! We were supposed to be on the dawn patrol, but she didn't tell me." A pause. "Or maybe she did, I can't remember. Anyway, I slept in, and she was waiting out there the whole time for me to come out. As the patrol was about to leave, she finally decided to come and find me. StarClan, was she embarrassed. Served her right, in a way. For once, she was the one who was made to look mouse-brained."

Nightpaw continued talking about her mentor, but Frostpaw just stared at her curiously. Smokepaw seemed to relax slightly as he listened to his sister, as did Rainpaw. The black she-cat had that sort of effect on cats, Frostpaw supposed. Suddenly, a grey tabby head popped into the den. Duskclaw. Rainpaw became immediately animated, greeting the tom politely.

Duskclaw broke into a purr, echoing the greeting and flicking his tail over the gray apprentice's ears. His son's ears. Frostpaw knew that the pair would have ordinarily started a conversation, but the warrior turned to her instead.

"We're going out for a hunting lesson," he told her, gesturing for her to follow him out of the den. Frostpaw did so only because of the fact that this tom was her new mentor. Having heard what Rainpaw had been telling him about her, she knew Duskclaw thought that she was weak and incompetent. Now that she had the chance, she was determined to prove him wrong.

Initially, Snowfeather had been furious that a tom had been assigned to be her mentor. Sandstar had argued that there were no other she-cats in the Clan that would be able to push Frostpaw as much as Duskclaw. The grey tabby was a respected warrior in the Clan, and for good reason.

That didn't make Frostpaw any happier about the situation.

The orange apprentice was suddenly jolted out of her thoughts as she ran into something. Someone, more like. Embarassedly, she took a few steps back as Duskclaw turned around, unimpressed.

"I hope you're more alert when it comes time for you to catch prey," he remarked, one ear twitching.

Frostpaw muttered a quick apology, before looking around at the needle-littered clearing that the two had found themselves in. All around them, tall pine trees stood to attention, swaying slightly as a light breeze brushed past them. Although it was hard for the orange apprentice to imagine, according to what she had heard this forest was not nearly as dense as ThunderClan's.

"Over there," a sharp voice suddenly hissed.

Frostpaw's head shot up, her brain working to process what her mentor had just said. All she could managed was a small "Huh?" before Duskclaw flicked his tail over her muzzle.

"Lizard," he whispered, eyes flashing disapprovingly. Frostpaw scanned the surrounding forest for a few moments before she spotted the aforementioned lizard sunning itself on a small rock. It took her a few moments to realise what Duskclaw wanted her to do. I don't even know the hunter's crouch yet, let alone how to catch something! Looking up at the grey tom uncertainly, she saw that her mentor was completely serious.

Steeling herself, Frostpaw dropped into something reminiscent of the hunter's crouch that she had seen other apprentices show off. She started to slink toward the lizard, circling around first to find better cover. For the first time in her life, she became acutely aware of her brightly coloured pelt. Determined to catch this lizard nonetheless, Frostpaw sprung out from the bush she was hiding behind, claws outstretched. To her dismay, she fell about a tail-length short and the lizard sprinted away in the opposite direction. What did he expect? she thought irritatedly, disappointment quickly turning to anger. He better not try and give me any sort of lecture for that.

Suddenly, Duskclaw appeared from the direction that the lizard had escaped to. The said lizard was now hanging, dead, in his mouth. Putting down the prey, the grey tom then approached her.

"That wasn't too bad."

Surprised, Frostpaw's head snapped up and she studied her mentor curiously.

"You tried to give yourself cover, which worked reasonably well despite your pelt colour, and despite the fact that your crouch was pathetic . . . " he drawled, "it's not the worst I've seen. And the prey was caught in the end, which is really all that matters."

Unsure whether to take his feeback as a compliment or an insult, Frostpaw gave a small nod and sat down, curling her tail over her paws.

"Try dropping into the hunter's crouch," Duskclaw prompted, sitting down himself.

Frostpaw did so, albiet unsurely.

"We're not trying to swat bugs here."

Peering up at her mentor confusedly, she suddenly became aware that her tail was twitching. Determinedly, she stilled it.

"Try folding your ears down, they stick up like a rabbit's."

Narrowing her eyes in annoyance slightly, Frostpaw flattened her ears to her head.

"You can crouch lower than that."

Oh for StarClan's sake.