Stuck in an Island with Twelve Beautiful Women
Chapter 873 - 875

Chapter 873: Chapter 875

"I’ve thought about that," Jude admitted. "But I don’t remember anything. I don’t remember planning any of this. I only remember waking up here after the outbreak."

"But what if the outbreak wasn’t real?" Serena said.

Everyone looked at her.

She bit her lip and continued, "What if the world didn’t end? What if it was just us brought here? What if we’ve been lied to this entire time?"

The words landed like stones thrown into still water.

Sophie stood abruptly. "We need to search the island. All of it. Not just the places we’re used to. We need to go beyond the border."

"No," Jude said quickly. "That’s suicide. The monsters, "

"Maybe they’re not monsters," she snapped. "Maybe they’re guardians. Maybe they’re there to keep us in , not keep danger out."

Everyone was looking at Jude now. Waiting. Expectant.

He swallowed hard. "We’ll scout the border tomorrow. A small group. No one goes alone. If there’s something hidden here, we’ll find it."

That night, no one slept deeply. Lamps were kept burning in every shelter. The treehouses stayed crowded. Jude found himself lying between Grace and Lucy, both of them curled against him as if trying to shield him, or themselves, from whatever darkness might reach through the walls again.

At some point in the night, he awoke to the sound of whispering. Not voices, but something subtler, like leaves brushing against each other. He rose and walked to the window. The forest beyond their home was alight with blue fireflies, dozens of them swirling in slow, synchronized spirals. They drifted across the clearing, and as Jude watched, they passed through the outer edges of the camp without resistance, passing through walls, bodies, tents, like mist.

He turned to wake Lucy, but she was already sitting up, eyes open, glowing blue.

So was Grace.

And from the other treehouses, one by one, lights blinked into being.

They were all awake.

They were all staring at him.

And again, in that same joined voice, they said:

"You are beginning to remember."

Then the lights vanished.

The women collapsed.

Jude stood alone in the silence, shaking, breath shallow, knowing the dream was over.

And the truth had already begun to rise.

The morning came with a strange quiet. Not the natural hush of dawn before the birds stirred, but a thick, unnatural silence that seemed to press on Jude’s ears. He sat up in the treehouse, rubbing sleep from his eyes, and for a moment he wondered if the world had stopped moving. Lucy was gone from her usual spot beside him, and so was Grace. The indentations on the mat still held the warmth of their bodies, which meant they’d only just left. Jude swung his legs over the edge of the platform and climbed down without bothering to dress fully, pulling on only his loose shirt and tying it hastily around his waist.

The camp below was still. He expected to hear the soft murmur of voices, the clatter of morning chores, the rustling of feet across dry leaves, but there was nothing. Then, a low, rhythmic sound reached him, dull and steady, like the beat of a drum buried deep underground. It wasn’t coming from the volcano. No. It felt closer. More personal.

He walked slowly, passing by the shelters. The fires were still burning, though unattended. Steam rose from one of the cooking pots near the central pit, untouched and beginning to bubble over. Jude called out softly. "Lucy?" Nothing. "Grace?"

He moved toward the river, instinct pulling him that way, and as he reached the edge of the trees that opened up into the clearing by the water, he saw them. All of them. His wives stood in a wide semicircle, staring out at the river as if hypnotized. Their backs were to him. None of them moved. The only sound was the breeze through the canopy, stirring their hair and loose dresses. Jude hesitated at the edge of the clearing, then stepped forward.

"Lucy," he called, softer now, not wanting to startle them. "Grace? What’s going on?"

As if they had been waiting for his voice, all of them turned to look at him at once.

The effect was jarring. Twelve faces, identical in their expressions, blank, serene, too calm. Their eyes didn’t hold recognition, not at first. And then Lucy smiled. It spread slowly across her face, unnatural and too perfect. The others followed. One by one, they all smiled.

Jude stopped walking. His heart skipped a beat.

Then, just like that, it ended. Their shoulders dropped, eyes flickered with confusion, and a chorus of voices overlapped as they turned toward one another in alarm.

"What, ?"

"Where are we, ?"

"I was just making tea, "

"I don’t remember walking here, "

Amelia staggered slightly and Jude rushed forward to steady her. She looked up at him with wide, fearful eyes.

"I don’t know how I got here," she whispered. "I was in the shelter, talking to Zoey. We were folding blankets."

Jude looked past her. Zoey was standing next to the river, looking pale and shaken. "She was," Zoey said quietly. "And then she stopped mid-sentence and walked out. I followed her. So did the others."

One by one, they echoed the same story. Each had been doing something normal, preparing food, tending the fires, making repairs, and then... nothing. A blank. They’d walked here, wordless, without knowing why. Drawn by something.

That pulsing drumbeat returned. Dull, heavy, from beneath the ground. It was clearer now that they were silent again.

"Do you hear that?" Jude asked.

Scarlett nodded, her hand resting on the hilt of her blade. "Yeah. I thought it was just me."

Grace crouched by the edge of the river and touched the water. Her fingers trembled. "The river’s warmer than usual."

Jude knelt beside her. She was right. The water, usually cold enough to numb the fingertips in the morning, was lukewarm. Almost like blood.

He stood and turned to the others. "We go back to camp. Now. No one splits up. We stay together."