Chapter 1320
Night came gently, a velvet hush that seemed to caress the canopy and soften every breath. The stars above blinked through the tree gaps, but even they felt closer now - more intimate, more aware. Jude lay in the center of the moss altar, a tangle of bodies around him, skin against skin, limbs draped across his chest and thighs, soft sighs threading through the warm air like sacred incense.
He didn’t remember falling asleep. Maybe he hadn’t. Maybe sleep was irrelevant now. His body didn’t ache, though it should have. It felt charged, alive, like the rhythm they had created still lived inside his blood. The forest was pulsing in time with his heart.
Emma stirred first, the soft curve of her breast pressing to his ribs as she turned and looked up at him. Her lips, swollen and still glistening, parted in a sleepy smile. "You didn’t break," she whispered.
"I thought I would," he murmured, brushing her hair back.
"You’re not just a man anymore," she said, kissing his chest. "You’re what we made you."
Sophie rolled over, her arm wrapping around Jude’s waist. "What it made him," she corrected. "We were only the conduits."
Lucy shifted closer, her leg sliding possessively over his hip. "He was always the center. We just helped him remember."
The others were waking too - Grace nuzzling into his shoulder, Zoey stretching like a cat across his feet, Scarlet kissing the inside of his wrist. Susan, Natalie, and Stella curled into each other nearby, their bodies glowing faintly in the low starlight.
Rose stood at the edge of the altar, the black tree looming behind her. She was naked, but her skin shimmered with thin lines of gold, like the island had drawn runes along her body while they slept.
"It’s not finished," she said.
Jude looked at her, heart already racing.