Chapter 165 I Love You Too

Chapter 165 The Morning After
FREYA -

Freya woke before the sun, and for a moment, she didn't move.
Casey's room was quiet around her, washed in the gray color that came before morning, and the air held the warm scent of him in the sheets. She knew he was on her skin too, and her cheeks grew warm at the thought.
Casey slept on his side, one arm resting near her waist without trapping her there. A smile lifted lazily because even asleep, he had left her room to move.
His lips were relaxed, and his long lashes rested against his cheeks like small, dark golden crescents. Freya waited for the familiar tug beneath her ribs, and the ache that had always seemed to drag her toward him, no matter what.
Only... it didn't come.
The bond was there. She could feel Casey through it with a clarity that made her cheeks grow warmer. His wolf rested low and quiet, and the steady weight of his body beside hers felt more intimate than anything she'd experienced.
Yet, the bond wasn't pulling at her. Instead, it rested inside her, open and warm.
Freya let out a slow breath. Her body felt strange, lighter somehow, even with the soreness that made her shift carefully under the blanket. The ache wasn't sharp or wrong, but it was new, and it belonged to the night they'd shared.
A faint warmth moved through the bond, and Casey's hand flexed once against the sheet.
Freya stilled, but he didn't wake up. His body only shifted toward her before settling again.
She slipped from the bed carefully, pulling one of his shirts over herself before wrapping the blanket around her shoulders. The floor was cool beneath her feet, but it didn't make her feel weak. If anything, each step felt too light, too steady, like her bones had learned something while she slept and had not bothered to tell her what it was.
The Anchor still hung from the lamp beside his bed, and Freya paused beside it.
The stone looked ordinary in the gray light, dark and silent against the chain. Last night, she would have reached for it out of fear. Now she only touched the edge of it with one finger, then let it go.
Her gaze moved to the window.
The curtains were open enough to show the Ranch outside, quiet beneath the last shadows of night. Fence lights glowed along the drive, and the trees stood black against the sky. The grass beyond Casey's window looked almost silver in the dark.
Something near the window caught her eye.
An old football sat half wedged between the wall and a stack of books on the floor. The leather was scuffed, one side dented in like it had been stepped on too many times, and the white laces were all but gone.
Freya bent and picked it up.
It was softer than she expected where the leather had worn smooth. She turned it over and found faded black marker near the seam. Casey's name was there, written in a messier hand than she would have imagined, along with a crooked number that had nearly rubbed away.
A younger Casey had held this.
Freya pressed her thumb into the dented leather, and warmth flickered through the bond. Not a memory exactly, but something close. Pride. Grass stains. Cold air in his lungs. A boy's laugh. And then years of becoming what his father expected.
Her chest ached softly just before the room went completely still.
Freya lifted her head.
Outside the window, between one breath and the next, the gray yard was no longer empty.
Figures stood near the fence, and her fingers tightened around the football.
At first, she thought it was fog until a woman appeared. She stood barefoot in the silver grass, her braid hanging over one shoulder and dark stains covering the front of her dress. A man near the drive held one arm against his chest at an angle that made Freya's stomach clench. Two more stood behind him, their eyes fixed on Casey's window.
The dead had followed her here.
Freya's breath caught, but she didn't step back. The Claim warmed against her skin as the dead became clearer.
She saw torn shirts, old blood, mud on bare feet, fingers curled around wounds that no longer bled. Their faces were gray with death, but their eyes weren't empty. They watched her like they'd been waiting for this exact moment for her to wake and look back.
A whisper moved through the glass.
"A daughter will find us."
Freya's skin prickled from her shoulders to her wrists.
Another voice answered, softer and farther away. "A daughter will set us free."
The football slipped lower in her hands, pressed against her stomach, and behind her, the bed shifted.
She felt it through the bond that Casey was awake before she could turn. The sudden snap of his attention, as the room filled with a quiet danger, as he pushed himself up.
"Freya?"
She couldn't look away from the window then, but she stayed silent, hoping he'd come to her instead.
The floor creaked as he stood, and a second later, his warmth came up behind her, close enough that the bond steadied. He followed her gaze through the glass.
His body went tense when he asked, "What are you looking at?"
Freya swallowed. "The dead."
To her surprise, Casey didn't tell her that there was nothing there. And he didn't look at her like she was crazy either. Instead, his hand settled on her hip.
"How many?" he asked.
"More than before."
The woman near the fence lifted her chin, and Freya felt the air change. It wasn't so much the wind or the sound. It was something older that moved beneath the grass, under the house, under the land itself, and it pressed up through her feet to settle into her blood.
She realized then that the Mate bond had not trapped her. It had done something to her link with the dead.
Freya's grip tightened around the football as the Claim warmed harder against her chest. The dead weren't just watching now. They were leaning toward her, their mouths parting, their voices scraping together until their whispers became one sound.
"Valkyrie."
Casey went completely still behind her, but Freya didn’t know if he’d heard the word or only felt what it did to her through the bond.
A dark shape dropped from the roofline and landed on the fence beyond the glass.
Freya flinched, but Casey's hand only tightened at her hip.
The raven folded its wings and turned its head toward her, black eyes shining in the gray morning. Every dead face turned with it. Not to Freya, but away from her. Toward something she couldn't see.
Then a voice moved through the glass, low enough to make the football tremble in her hands.
"Grace."
Freya's stomach dropped.
Behind her, Casey's breath brushed her hair as he whispered, "What is it?"
Freya stared at the raven until the first thin line of sunrise touched the fence.
"They're talking." Her words came out as another whisper, barely audible over the air conditioner.
"What are they saying?"
"Grace."