Chapter 1574

He looked around, at the vines, the light, the warm moss beneath their feet, the women who had become his world. Then he looked to the heart-stone at the center of the space, and the golden veins that pulsed within it.

"The Bloom," he said.

Lucy smiled. "Perfect."

They didn't stay long. The Bloom would always be there now, waiting. A living archive. A sacred garden of memory. They returned to their sanctuary, hands held, kisses exchanged, the weight of this new creation humming through them like music.

That night, they gathered in the heart-bed again, but not for sex.

For stories.

Jude sat in the center, Lucy tucked against him, Zoey draped across his back, Sophie on his right, Stella and Emma curled against his legs, and the others arrayed around them in a slow circle of warmth.

He told them everything he'd felt when he touched the stone.

Visions of what came before.

Warnings of what might come again.