I had not prepared for what Draven read to me on the pavement three blocks from the High Council building while Zevran stood at my left shoulder and Otto and Tobias stood behind me like the world's most unlikely bodyguards.
The note said:
*Dr. Voss.*
*You asked, on the phone, why. You said it between the lines — every conversation we had, the question underneath was always: why did you need this? Why did it have to be my family? Why did it have to be me?*
*I have been asking myself that for longer than you have.*
*Your grandfather rejected my mother. She had a child. I was that child. The child who was given a settlement and a surname and told to be grateful for the generosity of a family that wanted nothing to do with him. I watched your father's pack grow. I watched everything that
