Stuck in an Island with Twelve Beautiful Women
Chapter 1565

Chapter 1565: Chapter 1565

It rippled like water, suspended in midair, tall as Jude, wide enough for two.

"It’s showing something," Susan said, stepping closer. "Is that... us?"

They all gathered around. Inside the mirror, images flickered - moments from their past. Their arrival on the island. Their first fear. The house in the trees. The night by the river. The shared dream that had once felt like a lifetime.

Then new images.

Things they hadn’t seen.

The glade they stood in, overgrown and crumbling. A storm sweeping the island. Jude lying alone beneath a twisted tree, eyes closed, skin pale. A future?

Sophie touched the mirror.

It changed.

The image twisted, showing her standing atop the cliff, wind in her hair, power surging from her palms like fire and gold.

"It’s not just showing," she breathed. "It’s asking."

"Choices," Jude said. "Paths we haven’t taken yet."

Lucy reached for his hand. "Do we each get one?"

Grace stepped forward and placed her hand beside Sophie’s. The image shifted again - twelve points glowing on a vast map of the island, each marked by a different light. Red. Blue. Silver. Green. Each pulsing faintly.

"It’s a map," Stella said.

"No," Rose whispered. "It’s a calling."

Each of them walked forward, and the mirror responded. When Emma touched it, a silver point flared on the far western coast. When Scarlet stepped up, a violet light shone from the southern forest. For Zoey, a crimson light in the volcano’s shadow. For Lucy, a golden flame in the very heart of the island.

And for Jude, the center.

The root.

The mirror flashed, and a low tone echoed through the clearing. It wasn’t alarming. It was invitation.

"You said we made something last night," Rose said, turning to Jude. "This is it."

He stepped forward and faced them. "Then we follow it."

The mirror shimmered once more and vanished.

No fanfare.

Just absence.

But the path ahead was clear now, glowing faintly where each person’s chosen point pulsed.

"We split up," Emma said, eyes narrowing. "That’s what this wants."

Zoey cracked her knuckles. "Good. It’s about time I got to stretch without someone grabbing my ass."

"Don’t act like you don’t love it," Stella teased, brushing Zoey’s hip with a grin.

Susan exhaled. "We separate... but we come back together, right?"

"Yes," Rose said. "Always."

Jude kissed Lucy softly, then moved down the line, kissing each of them. Lips, cheeks, necks - each touch a vow, each glance a promise. No one wept. There was no sorrow.

Only the weight of something sacred.

They stood at the edge of the clearing, twelve figures and one man.

He looked at them all.

"Find your light," he said. "And when we meet again..."

He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to.

They turned and walked, each to their point on the map, each guided by a different thread of light. The forest shifted again, creating paths unique to them, personalized as fingerprints.

Jude remained at the center, standing barefoot on the moss, feeling the island thrum beneath his soles.

He closed his eyes.

And waited.

The pulse was steady.

He didn’t know how long he stood there - time no longer obeyed rules - but eventually, he felt the air change.

A presence stepped into the clearing.

Not one of his wives.

Alara.

She was radiant, nude but cloaked in light, her hair alive with wind and blossoms.

"You’re beginning to see it," she said.

"The island?"

"No. You. "

She stepped closer, her fingers brushing his heart.

"You’re not a root anymore, Jude. You’re the tree."

And as she stepped back into the forest, the golden light beneath his feet flared - then rose.

And the island began to speak his name.

The name echoed not as a sound but as a sensation - Jude felt it ripple through the moss, hum in the trunks of trees, surge through the still air and the golden light above. Jude. Not a word. A pulse. A frequency. As if the island was no longer calling him, but breathing him. He stood alone in the glade, yet he felt surrounded by the presence of his wives, each thread of connection between them still strong, glowing in his mind like constellations strung across a velvet sky.

He turned slowly, scanning the landscape that had once felt like a mystery and now felt like a limb he had only just discovered he could move. The trees responded to his attention - branches shifting subtly, opening gaps in their foliage to reveal slices of sky. Beneath him, the moss warmed, and with every breath, the ground pulsed gently upward to cradle his feet.

He was the center now.

Not a leader by will, not a king by demand - but something deeper. A beating heart to twelve radiant arteries, each of them carrying light into the far reaches of this island-body.

And then, he felt them.

Not visually. Not through sound.

But through connection.

Zoey was already moving quickly, her steps sure, her energy like a crimson storm cutting through the jungle. Her excitement radiated through him, wild and hot. He felt the cool focus of Emma on the coast, her mind sharpened into a blade as she moved steadily toward the silver beacon. He sensed Stella’s laughter echoing like a soft breeze through a garden of violet blooms, while Scarlet walked in silence, her touch trailing over tree bark, absorbing wisdom from each knot and twist of wood.

Natalie paused near a reflective pond, her body swaying in rhythm with a melody the water offered her. Susan had stopped altogether, lying in a sun-drenched field, arms stretched, soaking in every heartbeat of the land. Lucy... Lucy was in a grove that pulsed like a womb, golden leaves falling around her in slow, sacred spirals. Grace’s emotions fluttered across Jude’s consciousness like a hundred butterflies - curious, eager, reverent. Sophie burned in a way that sent tingles down his spine - resisting still, questioning, but undeniably drawn forward.

Rose.

He felt her most clearly.

Her journey was not linear.