Chapter 6 - THE BARGAIN’S TOLL
The newborn had barely taken his first breath when the room turned cold enough to frost the floorboards.
The woman who stepped from the shadows of the broken window wore a gown woven from winter moonlight and dark obsidian silk. A crown of jagged frost-crystals rested upon her silver hair, and her eyes held the bottomless, ancient cruelty of the high Fae courts.
“A bargain is a bargain, Wolf King,” the sorceress purred, her voice sounding like dry autumn leaves scraping across frozen stone.
Kaye clutched the tiny, squalling bundle of blankets tighter against her chest, her maternal instincts flaring into a blinding, protective rage. She stepped backward until her spine hit the stone hearth, her wolf baring its teeth within the deep recesses of her mind.
“Who is she?” Kaye hissed, looking desperately at Jareth. “Jareth, what is she talking about?”
Jareth didn't answer immediately. He stepped smoothly in front of Kaye and the newborn, his broad shoulders forming an impenetrable wall between his family and the Fae entity. The golden glow returned to his eyes, burning with a dangerous, dark defiance, but beneath his aggressive posture, Kaye caught a flash of ashen terror on his face.
“Morwenna,” Jareth’s voice dropped into a lethal, guttural snarl. “Our agreement was clear. You stayed out of my lands.”
The sorceress—Morwenna—laughed softly, a sound like cracking ice. “Clear? Oh, Jareth, sweet, foolish Alpha. Nothing with the Fae is ever truly finished until the debt is paid in full.”
She glided forward, her footsteps making no sound on the wood.
“Years before you ever laid eyes on this northern queen,” Morwenna explained, her gaze flicking with malicious amusement toward Kaye, “your pack was starving, your borders were bleeding, and your crown was slipping from your head. You came to my domain begging for salvation. I offered you peace, power, and victory over your enemies.”
Kaye stared at Jareth, her heart dropping like a stone into a bottomless well. “Jareth... what did you do?”
“I paid the price she asked for,” Jareth muttered, his jaw clenched so tightly a muscle ticked in his cheek.
“Indeed you did,” Morwenna smiled, spreading her pale hands. “You swore a blood-vow to my court. I gave you freedom from my prior marriage-claim over you on one strict condition: you were forbidden from claiming a fated mate for ten full years. Ten years of cold isolation to test your resolve.”
Morwenna tilted her head, her smile widening into something razor-sharp.
“And the penalty for breaking that pact early, my dear Alpha? Any child conceived and born before those ten years expired belongs to me. By right of ancient blood-magic.”
The room seemed to spin off its axis.
Eight years. Only eight years had passed since their political wedding. They had broken the pact two years too early.
“No,” Kaye screamed, clutching the baby so hard her knuckles turned white. “You can’t have him! He is my son! He is flesh of our flesh!”
“He is the interest on a debt long overdue,” Morwenna replied coldly, raising a pale hand crackling with blue, serpentine lightning. “Hand him over, Queen Kaye, or I will rip this cabin—and everyone inside it—down to its very foundations.”
Jareth turned his head back toward Kaye for a fraction of a second. His face was completely pale, stripped of all royal arrogance, but his eyes burned with an absolute, terrifying clarity.
“Trust me,” he whispered softly.
Before Kaye could process his words, Jareth stepped past her, planting himself directly in the path of the Fae sorceress. He dropped to one knee, lowering his head—an Alpha king bowing to no one, offering his neck to the executioner.
“Take me instead,” Jareth commanded, his voice steady and unyielding.
Morwenna paused, her blue lightning flickering out as she stared down at the kneeling Alpha. Her victorious smile slowly faltered, replaced by a look of deep, suspicious disbelief.
“You offer your own soul, your own life, in exchange for a half-breed brat?” Morwenna sneered. “You think a dead Alpha pays a blood-debt?”
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“I don't offer my death,” Jareth said, raising his head to look her dead in the eye. “I offer my eternal servitude. Bind me to your court as your eternal hound. Strip my crown, strip my pack, strip my name. But leave my queen and my son untouched.”
Nobody in the room was prepared for the chilling, calculating answer Morwenna gave next.
