Chapter 23, The Glass Cage
Wren
“Rest, Wren. We will talk later.”
Skarde’s voice carried up from the foyer, low and vibrating with a finality that made my knees feel even weaker.
I paused for a fraction of a second at the top of the stairs, my silhouette sharp against the glass ceiling.
I didn’t turn around, but I inclined my head, a single, stiff nod of acknowledgment.
Then, I followed Rhys’s shadow around the corner, the thick basalt walls finally cutting me off from the Alpha’s heavy gaze.
The stairs had been the hardest part. My legs felt like lead, and every step onto those floating obsidian slabs felt like a gamble with gravity.
In High-Ridge, things were made of wood and iron; they groaned and gave under your weight.
This stone didn’t move. It didn’t breathe.
It felt dead and cold, yet strangely powerful.
Now, in the hallway, the air changed. It was bathed in the weak, freezing pink of the rising sun, smelling of ozone and expensive stone. There was no smell of woodsmoke here. No scent of damp earth or wet wool. It was clinical.
Rhys was waiting for me at the end of the corridor. He was leaning against a doorframe, arms crossed, already changed into a clean, charcoal-gray sweater that looked softer than anything I’d ever touched in the valley.
“Take a breath, ghost pup,” he said, his voice dropping the playful edge for something more observant. “You look like you’re about to faint, and Skarde would have my head if you cracked yours on his floors.”
He palmed a sensor on the wall, and the heavy door slid open with a pressurized hiss. I jumped at the sound, my hand flying to my chest. In the village, doors creaked on rusted hinges; they didn’t breathe at you.
The suite was bigger than my father’s entire house.
One wall was nothing but reinforced glass, looking out over the jagged peaks of the mountain’s spine.
But it was the tech that made me stop in the doorway.
It looked like something out of the forbidden archives: screens without buttons, lights without candles.
“I know High-Ridge likes their tradition,” Rhys said, walking toward a sleek, matte-black tablet docked on a side table. “But we prefer to keep our comfort. This is the interface.”
He tapped the screen, and the room came to life.
“Lights,” he murmured, sliding a finger.
The amber glow in the ceiling dimmed to a soft, warm honey.
“Temperature. The bed has a thermal core. Since you don’t have a winter coat yet, it’ll keep your blood from turning sluggish. You can set it to Alpine if you like it crisp, or Den if you want to sweat.”
I stepped closer, my fingers trembling as I lifted them toward the glowing screen. I didn’t touch it, afraid I’d break the magic. I felt like a scavenger who had stumbled into a palace from another century.
“Den?” I whispered, the word feeling heavy and bewildered on my tongue. The idea of a bed that could mimic the heat of a wolf-pile through a screen was beyond anything I’d ever imagined.
Rhys pressed the button, nodding. “Done.”
“Your palm print will be added to the system later,” Rhys explained, noticing my hesitation.
“For now, if you need any doors opened or the settings changed, just call for the staff. This is the intercom button.”
He pointed to a small icon of a steaming cup.
“You press it, and they bring whatever you’re craving. Though, for now, they’ve already stocked the sub-zero drawer in the corner with protein and water.”
I stared at the screen, my mind racing. I finally looked up at him, my voice small but steady. “Why are you showing me all this?”
Rhys stopped, his hand hovering near the tablet. He didn’t answer immediately. He leaned back against the wall, his dark eyes searching mine with an expression that wasn’t quite pity, but a sharp, clinical curiosity.
“I’m a tithe, Rhys,” I reminded him, my fingers curling into my palms. “I’m just a debt paid. You don’t put a debt in a room like this, and you don’t teach them how to use the lights.”
Rhys shrugged, his expression becoming unreadable as he slipped back into his casual mask.
“Boss’s business, Wren,” he said simply. “Skarde gave the orders for the west suite. My job is just to make sure you know how to navigate it. Think of it less as a room for a debt, and more as a fortress for a guest who isn’t used to the altitude yet.”
He pushed off the wall. “If you want to know why he’s treating you like this, you’ll have to ask him yourself. Good luck with that. He’s not exactly known for being an open book.”
He walked toward the door, his movements fluid and silent. “The shower is through here. There’s also a bathtub if you prefer to just relax.”
He paused at the door, his hand on the sensor. “Sleep, Wren. The mountain is loud when you first move in. Don’t fight the noise. Just let it become the background.”
The door slid shut, leaving me in the humming silence of the room. I felt like a specimen in a jar.
I sat down on the soft rug and watched the sun bleed over the peaks, shocked by how different they were to what I had heard all my life in High-Ridge. The terror was still there, but beneath it, a strange, hollow sort of wonder was beginning to take root.
Rhys was right: the mountain was loud.
I had expected the villa to be silent, a tomb of glass and stone, but as I lay on the bed, the noise began to bleed through the walls.
It wasn’t the sound of people or machines.
It was the mountain itself. I could feel the vibration of the waterfalls through the floor, a low-frequency hum that seemed to sync with my own pulse.
I could hear the wind whistling through the jagged gaps in the Black-Spines thousands of feet above, sounding like a choir of mournful ghosts.
And the “Den” setting on the bed was... overwhelming. It wasn’t just heat. It was a heavy, radiating warmth that felt like being pressed into the side of something alive. It was the closest I had ever felt to the safety of a pack, and yet, it was entirely artificial.
I didn’t think I could sleep, but the exhaustion was a predator of its own. It dragged me under into a heavy, dreamless dark.