Page 85 of Sohut's Protection

A brat.

He was calling Wawa a stinky brat.

She would argue with him if Wawa wasn’t still giving him a stink eye at the moment while rubbing his head against her neck.

“Ready?” Sohut asked, glancing around the clearing.

Taking a deep breath, Cleo looked around the clearing for one last time.

There was still some anxiety there about the fact she was leaving.

“Ready,” she said.

* * *

The walk through the jungle was much harder than she’d thought it was going to be.

Even with a full belly and the fact it wasn’t dark yet, it went painfully slowly.

—or, maybe her legs were still weak from all the lovemaking earlier.

Staring into Sohut’s back now, Cleo’s cheeks grew warm at the thought.

The silly smile still hadn’t left her face and whenever he turned around to check on her, she realized his eyes were twinkling and there was a silly smile on his face too.

The only person not smiling was Wawa.

Every now and again, he’d hop off her shoulder to disappear into the jungle’s depths and she’d worry, much to Sohut’s incredulity.

“That…thing could kill me, you, and every other beast in this jungle,” he muttered for probably the fifth time, as he hopped over a fallen tree and stretched out his hand to help her over.

“For some reason, it likes you…” He paused. “Though, I can see why.”

Cleo’s eyes met his green ones and she felt the warmth there.

It only made her cheeks grow warmer.

The deeper into the jungle they went, the denser it seemed to get and she soon realized that where she’d been staying was nowhere like the rest of this Koznia Jungle, as Sohut called it.

Every now and again, she’d see bits of animals she had never seen before peeking through the undergrowth at them.

The first time she’d seen two yellow eyes staring back at them, she’d moved so close to Sohut, she’d bumped into him.

He’d assured her that he wouldn’t let anything dangerous get close and that Wawa was also doing the same with his “high alarming body odor.”

It didn’t take her long to realize just how much she trusted him when she almost forgot there were animals around them at all, her mind instead replaying what happened at the water hole over and over again.

And he was thinking about it too.

She could see it in his eyes every time he looked back at her.

As night crept in, Sohut stopped by a humongous tree and looked up into its branches.

“We sleep here this dark-cycle,” he said.

Cleo looked up into the branches high above.

She could climb trees. She was skilled at it, but this one had no notches she could get a hold of and the trunk was too big to wrap her arms and legs around. Not to mention, the lowest branches were at least thirty feet above her.

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