Arius paused for a breath and looked up at the sky. “I blame man. I think of these wild beasts watching man react with other men, dealing with man reacting to them, and I believe they learned, Lyle. They had to. Learn or be beaten, learn or get starved, learn or die. So they learned to react like their new masters—like man did—and the part of them, the natural order of them, was displaced. Voilà: fear, chaos, turmoil.”
The premise had a ring to it that was almost believable. Still, it was hard to trust a vampire professing to be an expert on wolves. “And what makes you an authority? Be it wild or shifting wolves?”
Arius shrugged. “I live, I learn. I’ve had a lot of time to watch and reason, and I intend to have still more of it. With knowledge comes power, and only a powerful presence is
