Alaric POV
He had waited six years for that mark to appear.
Alaric ran behind the girls, keeping his expression locked at panicked and urgent, while somewhere under his ribs a thing he had no clean name for quietly uncoiled. The plan had been built around a mark that might never come. Might appear years from now. Might never appear at all, prophecy being the unreliable thing it was.
It had appeared tonight. In the smoke and the ruin, while everything burned exactly as arranged. The timing was almost elegant.
He watched the back of Selene's head while she ran. The crescent was fully visible now even from behind, glowing faintly crimson through the smoke. Soldiers were screaming about it in three corridors simultaneously. The Alpha King's men had been given a description. Crescent mark,
