Glassback Hearth · First book
Glassback Hearth
A Post-Nuclear Mutant Romance
She came looking for shelter. He was supposed to be the thing she feared.
Beyond the ruined pass, under a storm-lit mountain, a carved doorway burns with impossible warmth.
Inside waits the kind of monster the wasteland teaches you to avoid — armored, glass-spined, watchful, and far too careful with the woman he should never let close.
In the radioactive hush after civilization's collapse, survival has rules: don't trust strangers, don't touch the infected, and absolutely do not fall for the gorgeous mutant guarding the warmest hearth in the wasteland.
Tropes
Touch her and die · Forced proximity · Shelter with teeth
Heat
Slow burn → scorched earth
Vibes
Blue-ash cold, ember-light, glass scales, hard-won trust
Opening teaser
A door in the mountain
The wind had teeth that night, and I had nothing left to feed it.
I expected the door to be locked. I expected the mountain to be empty. I did not expect the warmth — that impossible, breathing warmth — and I certainly did not expect him, standing in the firelight with his back to me, every glass plate along his spine catching the flame like a stained-glass cathedral built for ruin.
He didn't turn. He only said, in a voice like coals under snow, "Close the door before the cold gets in."