Stuck in an Island with Twelve Beautiful Women
Chapter 896 - 898

Chapter 896: Chapter 898

Once night fell, they dined without words. Root caps and fish steamed. Their bodies felt hungry, their minds full. The forest sang around them: life renewed after rain.

After eating, they formed the circle. No torches, only prisms of firelight reflecting from wet leaves.

Jude raised his head. "Tonight," he said, "we speak again, freely. Without fear."

Lucy leaned forward. "We speak to our watchers."

Grace unwrapped her burned knife. "We speak to the island."

They shared bits of story, each wife spoke of fears, dreams, hopes reborn. Jude recounting his first glimpse of the shell beneath the island’s crust. They spoke laughter with tears and tears with laughter. They confessed a dozen small memories regained. The forest around them listened.

Afterward, they walked together into the tented platform, where their beds nestled beside broad trunks. They spoke quietly as they dressed for sleep, brushes of intimacy without shame. Jude and Lucy lay side by side; Grace and Emma lay with Sophie; Nefertari held Serena, awaiting the vigil.

At midnight all were asleep except Jude. He sat outside, rain-cooled blanket around him, watching watchers carved in driftwood near the platform. Their forms stood bathed in moonlight.

He looked back toward the arch, silver gray, silent sentinel. Beyond it the forest slept.

He heard the island breathing through the trees. He thought of the watchers slumbering. He felt the hum of the plateau, the creek, the chamber where memory dwelled. He whispered, "We remain."

And the island echoed, gentle, living: We remember you.

Jude held his breath. He remained.

The dawn light filtered through the canopy with a softness that belied the tension simmering beneath the camp’s routines. Jude rose from his treehouse platform, his muscles stiff from a night of half-wakefulness, the weight of unspoken worries pressing down on him. He stepped onto the wooden walkway, pausing as the mist drifted through the trees like scattered breaths, obscuring the lower levels of the settlement. The air smelled faintly of wet earth and moss, a comforting scent that had grown too familiar. Yet beneath it lurked something unfamiliar, something he couldn’t yet name.

Each morning felt like a fragile truce. The island still held its beauty, birds singing with careless joy, sunlight dancing through the leaves, fish glinting in the river. But that beauty now carried an undercurrent of danger, one he could neither confirm nor dismiss. And so today, like every day, he would keep his distance, wary, watchful.

He walked down the steps, barefoot on the damp wood, and found the camp already stirring into life. Sophie and Zoey were preparing fish traps near the river, their movements deliberate but quiet. Susan and Serena were gathering mushrooms and berries from the forest floor, heads bent low, voices hushed. Grace and Lucy were tending the gardens, softly humming as they knelt to weed. Emma sharpened a bone blade nearby, her eyes distant, her expression unreadable.

"Morning," Jude said, though the word felt heavy on his tongue. He offered a small smile to each of them in turn. They nodded back, most with the same care that might be used to greet a trusted friend, but something behind their eyes made him hesitate. Too still, too composed. He swallowed.

He walked to the firepit once they all had gathered, the warmth of the embers a small reassurance. He set down a bowl of herbal tea and motioned for everyone to sit. Silence settled around them, tense but controlled.

"Breakfast in a moment," he said. "But I’d like to talk first."

They sat in a loose circle. His wives arranged themselves as they always did, but none offered the usual banter to fill the space. He felt their gazes flick between him and the fire, as though afraid to commit to anything beyond the moment.

"I know what’s happening isn’t... simple," he began. "I know the dreams have gotten stronger. The blackouts more frequent. I know I’m not the only one trying to watch what’s happening."

They all nodded, though no one spoke.

"I want us to share everything, all of it ." He let the silence stretch for a heartbeat. "Even the small things. A shift in appetite. A word said twice. Feeling your name on my lips when you weren’t there."

Lucy exchanged glances with Grace before speaking. "I still wake up feeling like I’ve been elsewhere. Like I dreamed... but the memory dissolves before I can name it."

"Every night," Emma whispered. "I go to sleep and I think it will be the same night as before. But sometimes... it isn’t." She pressed her palm to her chest. "I feel the air change. A presence. Then nothing. And I wake up with my hands folded in prayer even though I don’t remember praying."

Susan swallowed. "I found roots arranged in lines around my fire last night. Lines that weren’t there before. In the ash. I didn’t do it."

Sophie’s voice was tight. "My voice... I hear it in the forest when there’s no one there. It’s not mine. But it sounds like it is."

The circle hummed with shared secrets, half-expressed truths. Jude looked at each of them, his heart aching. He wanted them safe. He wanted answers.

"I’ve started keeping track," he said. "I want us all to do it. Every evening, we write down what we remember, no matter how small, and place it in the box."

He lifted a small wooden box, its lid worn, the hinge loose. "This box will be our record. We’ll read it together once a week, see if we can map it. Patterns. Chains. A way out."

Grace exhaled. "I will do it."

Emma placed a hand over Jude’s. "All of us."

He nodded. "All of us. And if anything feels... wrong , if another wife loses time, or I do, or something else happens, we stop everything. We camp separately. We wait until the feeling passes. Together, but apart."

They all agreed.

They ate in silence, each bite small and measured. The food should have tasted like home, but now it felt distant, abstract. Afterward, Lucy and Emma helped clear the dishes while Jude and Susan prepared the floodlights for the night watch.