<h4>Chapter 1398: Chapter 1398</h4>


    Jude thrust up into her, his hands gripping her hips, and she cried out as he began to move inside her, fast and desperate, their bodies pping together with wet sounds, her breasts bouncing as she rode him harder, until she came with a sharp cry and copsed over him.


    But they weren’t done.


    Natalie and Scarlet guided her off gently, recing her bodies with theirs. Scarlet kissed him while Natalie rode him next, her movements fluid, hair falling over her face as she clenched around him, moaning into his ear. Then it was Ste - wild and breathless - and La - slow and sensual - then Grace again, this time straddling him and bouncing until her voice broke on a scream.


    They shared him, passed him between them like a sacred offering. And he gave himself willingly - thrusting, tasting, groaning, kissing, until the lines between them blurred, and there was no more Jude and wives, no more ind and people, only this pulsing rhythm that moved through them all.


    Sophie took himst.


    She didn’t speak.


    She just kissed him slowly and sank down onto him, her body tightening around him like it had been waiting, needing, aching just for this. She moved with grace and power, hips grinding, eyes locked to his, her hands on his chest, pinning him in ce as she imed him with every deep, shuddering thrust.


    "I love you," she said, breathless, raw. "I’ll always love you."


    He came with her, their cries echoing through the chamber, through the trees, through the heart of the ind.


    The light red again.


    But this time, it stayed.


    And when they copsed together, a tangle of limbs and breath and love, the seed inside Jude’s chest began to glow again - steady, warm, alive.


    He knew it then.


    The ind had chosen them not to survive it...


    But to be it.


    The glow didn’t fade this time.


    It pulsed in rhythm with Jude’s heartbeat, resonating through the floor beneath him, the vines curling tighter around the edges of the stone as if drawn to his presence. The womeny scattered around him, glistening with sweat and glowing in the light, their breathing slow and heavy, skin flushed, eyes dreamy and wide. None of them spoke. None of them needed to. The silence wasn’t empty - it was sacred.


    Sophiey across his chest, her cheek resting just above where the seed had vanished beneath his skin. Her fingers absently traced the curve of his corbone. Lucy curled at his side, one hand syed over his stomach as if anchoring herself to him. Emma sat cross-legged nearby, her lips parted, breasts rising and falling as she watched him with a reverence that sent shivers through him.


    "I can feel it," Grace whispered, eyes fluttering shut. "Still inside you."


    "He’s changed," Zoey murmured, her voice low and warm, a satisfied hum. "Not like us. More than us."


    "No," Jude said softly, his voice hoarse from moaning, from whispering their names like prayers. "Not more. Just... connected."


    Ste sat up slowly, her hair tangled and damp, her lips swollen from kissing. "The ind isn’t watching us anymore," she said. "It sees through us now."


    Natalie nodded. "We’ve be part of it. The seed - it wasn’t just a gift. It was a key."


    "To what?" La asked, voice gentle, curious.


    Jude looked down at his chest, half-expecting the skin to split open and reveal something otherworldly. But there was only warmth. And light. And love. "To whateveres next."


    Scarlet stretched her long limbs like a satisfied cat, then rolled onto her side, her bare thigh slipping across his leg. "Then let’s find out what that is."


    Before he could respond, the air around them shifted.


    It wasn’t just the scent or the temperature - it was deeper. A sensation beneath the skin, like the air itself was brushing against their souls. The walls of the chamber began to tremble - not violently, but as though responding to something ancient and alive.


    The vines that had once adorned the walls now bloomed wildly, golden flowers bursting open and releasing a luminous pollen that drifted in slow spirals around them. The stone beneath Jude’s back warmed further, not from fire but from energy, something old and breathing and now fully awake.


    And then the floor opened.


    It didn’t crack or crumble. It simply parted.


    Like the petals of a colossal flower, the stone unfurled beneath them to reveal a spiral staircase descending into darkness lit by flickering pulses of golden light. The steps glowed faintly, as if the ind was offering a path - and a choice.


    The women sat up, one by one, staring into the spiral below them.


    "It’s an invitation," Rose said. "Downward. Into whatever this ce truly is."


    Sophie’s brows furrowed. "Or a trap."


    "It could be both," Zoey muttered, retrieving her wrap, though she didn’t bother covering herself.


    Lucy turned to Jude, fingers still entwined with his. "If we go down there... there’s no guarantee wee back the same. Or at all."


    Jude pulled her closer and kissed her slowly, letting her taste his answer before he even gave it voice. "Then we go together."


    They stood one by one, naked and gleaming in the golden haze, like a tribe of gods ready to descend into the belly of the world. Jude led them, still barefoot, still glowing. The spiral swallowed them slowly, each step echoing with quiet promise.


    As they descended, the air grew warmer,ced with that same floral sweetness and something deeper - something earthy and ancient, like the breath of stone and root and time itself. The walls pulsed with veins of light, leading them downward in slow rhythm, each pulse in sync with the beat in Jude’s chest.


    When they reached the bottom, the world opened again.


    A vast chamber stretched before them, impossibly wide, with a pool of ck ss at the center. Around it stood monoliths carved with runes none of them had ever seen, but all of them recognized. Thenguage of dreams. Thenguage of the ind.