He raised both eyebrows, looking like a smug fuck. So of course, I had to add, “If there’s a flaw in the wolf design, you should take it up with the creator.”

Mic. Drop.

He didn’t take offense, though, because he had no chinks in his armor. He just ruffled my hair and led me along the rows of tables toward our pack. As soon as that table came into view, the noise in here made sense; Shadow’s friends were riling everyone up.

“Len ingested so much of the poppy flower,” Lucien said with a snort of laughter, “that he thought he was in his garden, but he was really running naked through his family’s celestial moon party. His mother chased him with a chailis cane. She meant business.”

Everyone laughed, even Len, after which he shrugged. “Look, I wasn’t even five hundred years old at the time and I have regrets. I have many regrets about how I chose to spend my youth.”

Not even five hundred. Youth? Like that was a damn teenager.

Many other beings had gathered around to bask in the glow of the “gods” who ran this world. They filled all the chairs, except for the few around Angel. Maybe it was the way she glared at any who tried to slither into her personal space, or more likely it was the intense glow she emitted all powered up that warned them not to mess with her.

This was how it had always been with her in this dining hall. Separated. Alone. Untouchable. Everyone had heeded her warnings except for me. I’d fucked that up from the first moment I met her, but my mistake turned out to be the very best thing I could have done.

“You’re looking very relaxed,” she said when I dropped in beside her, Shadow taking the seat on the other side of me. Angel had managed to keep two spots free for us.

“You’re not,” I shot back, noting how her hands clenched, as if she wished her blades were in them.

“These lugheads had to choose my section of the dining hall to set up camp,” she seethed. “I told them to move on, but at risk of wasting my energy, I can’t literally move them.”

It was a large dining hall. They could have sat anywhere, but they had chosen to crowd into her spot. Not just crowd, but bring in dozens of other beings, all of whom would normally give Angel a wide berth.

“Whose idea was it to sit here?” Shadow asked her, leaning back in a relaxed manner, watching the antics of his idiot friends.

Angel glared daggers at him, even though he wasn’t looking her way. “Reece, of course. I thought we’d given up on this stupid dance years ago, but apparently, he still has a need for punishment in his system.”