Chapter 1678
The air on the beach shifted, heavy with warmth and something more primal. It wasn’t just salt and sunlight anymore - it was musk, skin, breath. The first of the newcomers began to remove their clothes, not in shame, but in curiosity. A girl with moon-pale hair dropped her shawl and stepped forward barefoot, brushing past Lucy to touch the moss creeping down from the trees. She gasped when it curled around her toes, gentle as a lover’s sigh.
"It’s real," she whispered.
Rose smiled faintly. "It always has been."
More followed. A pair - lovers already, it seemed - walked hand in hand toward the edge of the jungle. Jude watched the moss ripple as they stepped onto it, and felt the soft pulse in his chest answer. The island was opening to them. Slowly. Seductively. Daro and Kael moved through the group like guides, touching arms, whispering reassurance, radiating that soft, sensual glow that marked the awakened.
Lucy stayed at Jude’s side, her fingers threading between his like vines. Her bare hip brushed his, her mouth curving into a knowing smile. "This is what it wants."
Jude turned slightly. "What we want?"
"No," she whispered. "What it wants through us."
She leaned up to kiss his jaw, soft and slow, and her other hand slid along his stomach, fingertips just teasing the edge of where heat began to pool. The island felt it too - the way the wind pressed lower against their skin, the way the moss thickened beneath their feet like a bed.
Then Rose walked past them, toward the newcomers.
She stopped in front of the woman who had led the first boat. The one still clothed, still tense. The woman met her gaze without flinching.
"Do you want to know?" Rose asked, voice like silk.