Chapter 1761
Jude moved toward the center without thought. It felt inevitable. The golden pool called to him, not just as a man, but as something more the one who carried the island's rhythm now, the one who had passed through love, through pain, through surrender and unity. He stepped into the liquid.
It clung to him like desire thick and silky, crawling over his skin, sinking into him. His breath caught as heat bloomed low in his spine, spreading upward, downward, everywhere. He groaned, falling to his knees as the pool shimmered around him.
The women joined him one by one.
Lucy first, her body arching into his arms, her lips parting as she slid against him, skin to skin, her breath coming faster. Then Rose, who moved behind him, her hands on his shoulders, her mouth at his neck, whispering words that made his spine shudder. Zoey straddled his lap, kissing him deeply, tasting his breath as her hips rocked against his. Grace pressed close, her fingers trailing over his ribs, her mouth finding his chest.
The basin glowed brighter.
Emma entered with Stella, both nude and flushed, their mouths meeting hungrily before they turned toward Jude together. Susan, Sophie, Natalie, Scarlet, and Layla joined, circling like stars drawn to a sun, their hands exploring one another as much as they touched him.
It wasn't chaos.
It was worship.
Bodies tangled.
Mouths found mouths.
Thighs wrapped around hips.
Breasts pressed to backs, to chests, to lips.
The pool rose, not with liquid, but with lighteach moan, each thrust, each cry of pleasure adding to its pulse. Jude moved between them, through them, within them, sometimes the lover, sometimes the beloved. Each woman claimed him in her own way, slow and teasing, hard and fast, gentle and wild.
Lucy rode him again, her body arching like a wave crashing through him.
Sophie gripped his jaw and kissed him like fire, whispering, "Mine," before she straddled his face and came with a gasp.
Emma wept softly when he filled her, their eyes locked, her hands clutched to his chest.
Scarlet bit his shoulder as she moved against him, wild and feral and beautiful.
Natalie cried out his name again and again, her body shivering in his arms.
Susan trembled with every breath, her fingers threaded through his hair, her thighs wrapped tight around his waist.
Rose knelt behind him once more, pressing kisses to his spine as Grace and Stella took him together, their bodies wrapped like ivy.
He lost himself in them.
In scent, in taste, in heat, in sound.
Hours passed.
Or eternity.
The pool shimmered with light so bright it filled the chamber, then liftedliquid rising like mist, condensing into dozens of glowing orbs that floated upward and vanished into the roots above.
And when the pleasure finally broke into stillness, when breath slowed, and bodies lay spent and glowing against each other, Jude looked up.
And saw the stars inside the roots.
Not a sky.
But a cosmos.
Living.
Breathing.
Connected to them now.
Rose crawled to his side, her body limp, her face radiant. "We've made the offering."
Sophie nodded, curled in Lucy's arms. "And the island accepted."
Jude lay on his back, arms spread, heart pounding.
He wasn't just full.
He was infinite.
Outside the chamber, a sound rose.
A chime.
No… a bell.
Calling them.
They stood, naked and glowing, and walked back to the cliff's edge where they had first arrived.
In the sky above the floating island, a doorway opened.
Shaped like a tear.
Filled with light.
And a voicenot Alara's, but one they all knew.
Their own.
"We are ready."
Jude reached for Lucy's hand.
She took it.
The others followed.
Together, they stepped into the light.
They passed through the doorway not with steps but with surrender, their bodies dissolved into warmth and light, pulled forward through a corridor of glowing breath. There was no sensation of falling, only expansion, as if the air around them stretched into infinity, wrapping them in a velvet cocoon of understanding and invitation. Time folded like a ribbon. Jude felt his past stretch behind him like a trail of golden footprints, each kiss, each moan, each tear etched into the fabric of what they had become.
Then, suddenly, the light receded, and they stood together once more, whole and naked, upon a field unlike any part of the island they had seen. It was open sky and endless meadow, the grass whispering in silver and lavender hues beneath their feet. The stars above were close, impossibly close, as though they had stepped into the breast of the night itself. At the center of the field rose a new tree - taller than the one before, crystalline and alive with a pulse that matched Jude's heartbeat exactly.
"It brought us here," Lucy said, her fingers still woven through his.
"But why?" Emma asked, her voice reverent.
Rose stepped forward, wind catching her hair. "Because this is the heart of it all. The source. The root of the island's dream."
The crystalline tree shimmered, and with a sigh like a thousand breaths releasing in perfect harmony, it opened. Its trunk peeled back in soft layers like petals, revealing a hollow inside, lit with golden light and lined with soft moss and twisting roots that beckoned them inward. They moved as one again, drawn into its center. Inside, the space was warm and alive. It thrummed with the rhythm of their pleasure, of their unity, as though the tree had been waiting for them all along.
Jude moved to the center, standing tall beneath the glowing spire above. His chest burned - not with pain, but with the certainty of purpose. He was the pulse now. The seed-bearer. The lover chosen not just by the island, but by the sacred rhythm that had shaped it.
One by one, the women moved around him. Lucy first, placing her hand on his heart. Then Sophie, her lips pressing to his spine. Emma, Zoey, Grace, Stella, Susan, Natalie, Scarlet, Layla, and finally Rose - all touched him, kissed him, whispered to him. Their voices became a hum, a chant, a song not made of words but of need and surrender and promise.