Stuck in an Island with Twelve Beautiful Women
Chapter 1233

Chapter 1233: Chapter 1233

Jude had one arm wrapped around Sophie, her hair trailing across his chest, the other stretched to where Lucy’s fingers laced with his. On his legs, Susan rested, drawing lazy shapes into his thigh, her smile barely a curve but deep with satisfaction. Grace and Layla were curled up beside him in a tangle of kisses and whispers, while Rose and Zoey lay opposite, their bodies entwined in silent conversation of skin and breath. Stella was perched slightly above them, braiding Emma’s hair with such delicate care that neither of them noticed Natalie climbing over to stretch across all three of them with feline ease.

They were a constellation of limbs and mouths, warmth and wanting, and nothing in the world outside this island had ever felt more distant.

Eventually, Jude sat up.

The movement was small, barely a ripple among them, but it made the others stir. Lucy’s eyes met his first, and she nodded. "We should see it."

The new island.

The others roused with soft sounds and shared touches, stretching, blinking away the haze of rest and bliss. No one asked where they were going. They just stood, dressed in whatever they could grab - wraps, silks, thin tunics woven from the glowing grass they’d discovered weeks ago. Then they moved as one, walking barefoot across the moss and dew, toward the edge of their sanctuary clearing.

The world beyond the trees was... unfamiliar.

But beautiful.

The trees had grown taller, their leaves glowing faintly with green fire-veins that pulsed like breath. The ground was soft, carpeted in silver moss that shimmered even without light. Flowers they’d never seen before grew in clusters along the path - tall and spiral-shaped, their petals humming with a soft, melodic vibration.

The sky was still the same strange sky of the island, with its ever-shifting moons and drifting constellations. But something was different now in the way it watched. It felt warmer. Closer. Less like a judging eye and more like a companion’s gaze.

They moved in silence, reverent, until they reached the cliff near the old fishing river.

There, below them, was the new landscape.

The river itself still wound through the terrain like a ribbon, but now it glowed faintly blue in the moonlight, and around its edges stood pillars of smooth stone that looked grown rather than carved. Beyond it, hills rose where there had once been flat plains. Small glowing fruit trees grew in perfect rings, and flowers shaped like spirals bent toward them, blooming in slow, deliberate patterns.

At the horizon, a new structure stood.

Not man-made.

Not ancient.

Alive.

A tree - not unlike the Seed Flame - but larger, rooted in the middle of a circular lake, with branches that reached so high they disappeared into cloud. Its trunk pulsed with light, its bark a shimmering weave of deep silver and purple, and suspended beneath it, hanging from thick glowing roots, were spheres of energy that moved gently in the air like lanterns in wind.

Zoey inhaled slowly. "What... is that?"

Lucy stood beside Jude. "It’s the Heart’s memory."

Sophie turned to her. "You mean the island’s?"

"No." Lucy’s voice was soft, but certain. "Ours."

The moment we joined. The moment we burned. It remembers that. And now it grows from it.

Natalie stepped closer to the edge of the cliff. "We need to go there."

Jude nodded. "Tomorrow."

Rose’s eyes gleamed. "We’re not afraid anymore, are we?"

"No," Jude said, smiling. "But that doesn’t mean we’re ready. We rest. We prepare. We go with intention."

They returned to the sanctuary slowly, touching the flowers as they walked, tasting the new fruit that grew low on the branches. Sweet, citrus-like, but warmer on the tongue. The forest whispered with their footsteps, and the wind seemed to carry their names in pieces.

That night, the fire was different too.

It burned a deep violet instead of orange, casting strange shadows that danced like glyphs across their skin.

The mood was gentler now - curious, more introspective. They didn’t devour each other like before. They explored. Kissed slowly. Lay beside one another not in frenzy, but in appreciation. Jude spent much of the evening with Emma, who hadn’t spoken much during the journey. She sat beside him, her head on his shoulder, her hand in his lap.

"I keep thinking," she said quietly, "that we might not wake up. That this is some dream."

He turned to her, brushing her cheek. "It isn’t."

"And if it is?"

He smiled. "Then I’d rather sleep forever."

She laughed softly, curling into him. "I want to see that tree up close. I want to know what it means."

"You’ll see it," he promised, kissing her forehead. "We all will."

Grace and Susan had climbed into the high branches above the sanctuary, lying side by side with their legs dangling over the edge. Below them, Layla rested on Rose’s stomach while Zoey braided Natalie’s hair, humming some forgotten tune from a past life that no longer mattered. Stella and Sophie shared fruit from the grove, laughing, occasionally feeding pieces to Lucy as she sat cross-legged by the fire, drawing new symbols into the dirt.

The flame pulsed in rhythm with their hearts.

It was like living in a world made only for them.

But even as they laughed and loved and pressed skin to skin beneath stars that listened, there was something new forming between them. A sense of purpose. They were no longer simply surviving or surrendering to pleasure. The island had asked them to lead it somewhere new, and now it waited - for them to understand how.

That night, Jude had a dream.

Not like the ones before.

In the dream, he stood before the tree in the lake.

But it was burning.

Not with fire, but with memory. The branches twisted with voices, and each voice was one of theirs, calling out in strange harmony. He saw each of the wives - not as they were now, but as versions of themselves - carved from light, from fear, from desire. Some beautiful. Some monstrous.