<h4>Chapter 1528: Chapter 1528</h4>


    Lucy stepped into his arms without a word. She fit perfectly, her body molding to his like a long-lost melody returning to the first verse. Her head rested on his chest, and her voice was barely a breath. "It wants us to love. Deeply. Openly. Freely."


    Rose circled behind them, her fingers grazing along Lucy’s back, then slipping down Jude’s spine. "It feeds on our connection. Not to drain us - but to grow."


    La approached next, barefoot and glowing in the moonlight. "I keep seeing that tree when I close my eyes. Even when I’m awake. It’s inside me now."


    "It’s inside all of us," said Grace, her voice soft, dreamy. She came to stand beside La, their hands linking.


    Jude nced around. The others were circling too, slowly, wordlessly. Not predators. Not prey. Just women who had given in to something ancient and full of promise. His wives. Changed, but still his.


    Sophie didn’t join right away. She lingered at the edge, eyes flickering over the group. Jude caught her gaze and reached out a hand.


    Her hesitation cracked, and she stepped forward, letting him pull her in.


    Emma was thest. She didn’t speak, but when she moved, it was like she’d been moving all along. Her arms slid around Lucy from behind, their bodies enclosing Jude between them, soft skin pressing through thin fabrics.


    No one gave amand. No one asked permission. It wasn’t needed.


    It began with a kiss.


    Lucy tilted her head and met Jude’s mouth with hers - soft, slow, worshipful. The heat that red between them wasn’t frantic. It was reverent. The others pressed close, hands roaming gently. Fingers tracing spines, brushing over hips, guiding and receiving.


    Sophie’s lips found his neck while Emma’s breath warmed his ear. La’s hands slid up his stomach. Rose, behind them all, hummed the melody softly, coaxing them in rhythm.


    The grass beneath them became their bed, the earth itself their altar.


    Clothes slipped away like falling petals. Warm skin met skin in a tangled weave of sighs and moans. Jude’s body was imed and shared, offered and adored, over and over again, as if each woman needed to feel him, to taste the bond they’d built through pain and hope and fire.


    Sophie straddled him first, her body tight and strong, her gaze fierce as she rode him slow and deep. Her hands clutched his chest, her lips parting in a soundless cry when she tipped over the edge.


    Then Lucy, trembling with need, guided him into her, her breath hot against his cheek as she whispered his name with every pulse.


    Emma kissed him through it all, her fingersced with his while Rose kissed along his thighs and neck, painting every inch of him with heat.


    Zoey and La explored each other nearby, their bodies rolling in mirrored pleasure, gasping andughing and moaning in the rhythm of the ind’s breath. Grace and Natalie joined them, the four moving together in a knot of warmth and need.


    Scarlet, Ste, Susan - all touched and were touched. There was no hierarchy, no shame. Only heat and love and an intimacy so deep it felt like worship.


    Jude felt himself unravel and reform, again and again, each time carried higher by the chorus of his wives’ pleasure.


    When they copsed, tangled in each other, hourster, the air was thick with musk and satisfaction. The stars above were brighter. The trees closer. The hum louder - but it no longer sounded ominous. It sounded like harmony.


    Stey with her head on Jude’s chest, her breath slow and even. "I think the ind’s finally listening to us."


    "No," Rose murmured from the other side. "We’re finally listening to it."


    He closed his eyes. The warmth of twelve bodies surrounded him. The air smelled of wild flowers and rain and sex. The ground pulsed beneath him.


    And for the first time since arriving, Jude didn’t feel like an outsider to the ind.


    He felt like part of it.


    As he drifted toward sleep, Rose’s voice whispered in his ear. "Tomorrow, the ind will ask more. Are you ready?"


    He didn’t answer aloud.


    But his arms tightened around them all.


    Yes.


    Jude awoke to the feeling of breath on his neck. Not just one, but several, warm and soft, like a dream that hadn’t ended with the sun. The canopy above them rippled with gold light, casting long, dancing shadows through the leaves. Birds didn’t sing. The ind hummed instead, vibrating faintly through the ground like a lover murmuring in sleep.


    Sophie stirred first, her leg still draped across his thigh. Her eyes blinked open slowly, meeting his with the kind of look that spoke of shared secrets and a depth that needed no words. She didn’t move away. Instead, she lifted her hand and drew azy circle over his chest, the pad of her finger warm and slow.


    "You didn’t dream," she said.


    He shook his head. "No. But I felt everything."


    Emmay on his other side, silent, her head tucked beneath his arm, the tips of her fingers resting just above his hip. She wasn’t asleep. She hadn’t been for some time. Her lips brushed against his skin as she whispered, "They’ll want more, Jude. You can feel it too."


    He didn’t answer. Because she was right.


    Around them, bodies shifted slowly in the mossy bed they had made. Lucy was curled with Natalie, the two of them so tightly wound together it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began. Lay with Grace, their bare backs pressed together, fingers loosely intertwined. Rose sat up with the grace of someone never truly asleep, her hair cascading around her like a halo of dark silk. She was watching him.


    And she was smiling.


    He tried to hold on to the rational part of himself, the voice that had been cautious, resistant. But it was quieter now, like it had taken a step back to let something else speak.