Chapter 170 The Vision Stone

Chapter 170 I Just Got You
FREYA -

Freya’s fingers stayed locked around the vision stone until Casey worked them open one at a time.
The stone slipped from her palm and landed in the wet grass with a soft sound that cut through everything. Freya stared at it, unable to blink, while her palm still burned with the cold the stone had left behind.
Casey moved to stand in front of her. “Freya,” he said, his voice low. “Look at me.”
She tried. Her eyes reached his face, but the hallway from the vision still hung behind him.
“That bastard,” Freya whispered.
Casey went still.
Freya’s eyes finally met his, and the look on his face told her he had seen it too. Not through the bond. Not through her explanation. The stone had shown him the truth, and now Casey stared at it like he wanted to crush it.
The air between the Stones shifted, and Freya’s gaze lifted past Casey. Lance stood where the mist had first gathered, thinner now and less solid around the edges. Like the sunrise was beginning to push through him.
“You saw it,” Lance said.
Casey’s head turned to where Freya stared, but he looked straight through Lance. His hand closed around Freya’s and he stepped back to her side.
Freya took a step forward, her hand out like she could grab him.
“Don’t go.” The words tore around the lump in her throat and the crack in her voice.
Lance’s face softened. “Little wolf.”
“No.” Her fingers dug into Casey’s hand. “You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to show up, tell me all of that, and then leave.” A tear finally broke over her lashes. "I just got you."
“I only stayed because my daughter was alive somewhere in this land, and I couldn’t reach her," he said. "And because the truth was buried and I knew she would find it and need me."
Freya shook her head once, but it did not move the ache out of her chest.
Lance took one step closer. “Now you know it.”
“That doesn’t make it fair.”
“No.” His sad smile returned, smaller this time. “But life rarely is, little wolf.”
A raven called from the trees, and every other sound seemed to drop out of the morning. The dead beyond the Stones turned their faces toward Freya all at once. Their shapes waited along the fence line, pale and still, but their silence felt heavier than whispering.
Grace sucked in a breath. “Freya.”
The Claim warmed against Freya’s chest, and something inside her shifted.
It wasn’t like the bond that had dragged her toward Casey for weeks. This opened lower and deeper, an empty place inside her she hadn’t known existed until the seal shifted. Before, the seams had felt solid, like part of her. Now she could feel every edge, cold and waiting, like a door inside her body had unlocked. Freya pressed her free hand to her stomach and staggered half a step.
Casey caught her. “What is it?”
Grace moved closer, her eyes wide. “The doorway.”
Freya stared at her. “The what?”
“You’re the doorway.” Grace’s voice shook, but she made herself keep talking. “You unlocked the seals,” Grace said. “Not all the way, but enough that they can feel it.”
The dead pressed closer. They didn't stagger forward like zombies in a movie. One moment they stood near the fence, and the next they were nearer the outer Stones. Freya felt them gather like cold hands hovering near a locked door.
“No,” Grace said sharply, looking toward them. “Not you.”
Casey’s body shifted in front of Freya and his shoulders broadened. His whole frame seemed to expand while the air around him changed, into something that was heavy and dangerous.
Lance looked toward him, and she saw something like awe on his face. “They told stories of old Valkyries bound to Berserker Mates,” Lance said. “Not always. Only when the land was unstable or the dead were restless."
Grace gasped and jerked her gaze back up to Casey, who was almost seven feet tall.
"What?" Casey asked, looking at Grace.
Freya repeated what Lance had said, and Casey’s face changed. “Tell me where to stand.”
The question moved through her more gently than any command could have.
Freya pulled in a careful breath and pointed beside her. “Here.”
Casey stepped there immediately, close enough that his arm brushed her shoulder. His warmth steadied the side of her body while the door inside her waited.
Lance stood in front of her now.
“Where will you go?” she asked.
“Odin’s Hall, if he’ll have me.”
Grace made a small sound beside the Stone.
Freya tried to smile, but her mouth shook too much for it. “You’re my dad. He’d better.”
Lance laughed once, quiet and broken. For one heartbeat, Freya could almost imagine what that laugh had sounded like in a kitchen, or a truck, or a yard where a little girl once ran toward him with both arms up.
Then his expression gentled.
“May I pass, little wolf?”
The question hurt worse than if he had simply vanished.
Freya looked at his face, trying to memorize the cut of his jaw, his dark hair, and the love in his eyes that had somehow lasted through death.
“I don’t want you to go,” she repeated.
“I know.”
Her hand pressed harder over the place where the doorway waited, and Casey’s hand lifted to her shoulder, but he said nothing.
Freya closed her eyes for one breath, then opened them. “You can pass.”
The doorway inside her opened.
Cold moved through her first, sharp enough that her breath caught. Then Lance stepped forward, and Freya held herself still, as he passed through the place she'd opened, and for one breath she felt old smoke, rain on pine, wolf fur, blood on wooden floors, and a father’s hand lifting a child high enough to touch sunlight.
His voice brushed through her as he went.
“I love you, little wolf.”
Then he was gone, and Freya folded forward into Casey's arms. The doorway stayed open, cold and waiting, and the dead surged toward the Stones.
Whispers filled the circle.
“Me.”
“Please.”
“Valkyrie.”
“Open.”
Grace dropped to her knees in front of Freya. “Close it. Freya, close it now!”
Freya shook with the sobs that spilled out of her and she sagged against Casey’s side, one hand still over her stomach. The cold pushed from inside her, asking to stay open, asking to keep giving, keep taking, keep letting them come.
Casey’s voice cut through the noise. “Freya, look at me.”
She dragged her eyes to his, and blinked past the tears that didn't seem to want to stop.
“You opened it,” he said. “You close it.”
Freya grabbed onto those words and forced one breath into her lungs.
“No,” she said, the word shaking but clear. “You don’t get to use me.”
The doorway shut.
The whispers snapped away so fast the silence rang.
Freya stayed bent against Casey while the sobs kept coming.
Casey and Grace stayed next to Freya until the pain numbed just enough to let her breathe. All the while, the ravens watched from the trees.
Her father was gone, but this time, she had been the one to let him go.