Chapter 1315
Around them, the others moved slowly, sensually. Not out of urgency now, but out of reverence. Sophie lay across Zoey’s lap, her mouth open as Zoey fed her ripe fruit, juice dripping down her chin, her breasts rising and falling with lazy breaths. Grace and Stella were face to face, their bodies still wrapped in a cocoon of limbs and kisses. Scarlet and Susan bathed in the shallow pool beneath the altar tree, their laughter soft, erotic, made of steam and touch.
The keepers had not left.
They stood in a half-circle around the altar, their bodies coated in gold-lit sweat, their eyes never blinking, watching Jude with silent understanding. One of them stepped forward - tall, pale, with raven-dark hair that spilled over her breasts like ink. She knelt before him and pressed her forehead to the base of his spine.
He flinched, but she only breathed there. Deep. Slow.
"She’s listening," Rose said from the roots above, her voice like velvet in the night. "To the seed inside you. To the echo of what you gave."
The keeper looked up, eyes wet. "He’s not alone anymore."
"No," Emma said, kneeling beside her. "He never was. But now we can hear it."
"Hear what?" Jude asked, voice cracked and low.
"The pulse," Lucy answered softly, kissing his shoulder. "The same one that lives in us. It was always there. You just opened it."
He sat up, the movement slow, his limbs heavy like stone kissed by waves. The roots shifted beneath him, lifting his body slightly as if the island itself was helping him rise.
When he stood, the keepers bowed as one.