CHAPTER 9: Half A Truth Is Still A Lie

POV: Imani

Naomi’s headquarters gave me an unsettling feeling in my tummy, and it took me a moment to understand why that was happening.

It wasn’t empty. There was furniture around, like a desk, a shelf, a narrow bed that was shoved against the wall, and everything was clean and neat, just as you would expect it to be. But there was something strangely impersonal about the place. There were no photos hung on the walls, no trinkets, no signs of wear whatsoever on the furniture that suggested someone had actually made this space their own. It looked more like a hotel or Airbnb room that had been rented for years without anyone ever settling in.

“Sit,” Naomi said, pointing towards the only chair beside her desk while she took the one behind it for herself.

I sat down, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to relax. My eyes moved around the room once more before settling back on her.

“You don’t actually live here,” I said. “This is just an office for you.”

A brief flicker crossed her face, a mix of acknowledgment and something else I couldn’t quite decipher. “That’s observant of you,” she replied, clicking her tongue.

“You already said that. In the exam room.”

“I meant it again.” She brought her hands together, forming a steeple with her fingers on the desk. For a long moment, she examined me, her expression carrying a mixture of calculation and fatigue. “What I’m going to share with you is something you’ve earned a portion of. Not all of it. I want to make that clear from the start, so you don’t spend the next hour getting angry about what I’m holding back instead of appreciating what I would share with you.”

“That’s a generous way to frame keeping secrets,” I pointed out, slightly tilting my eyes and raising an eyebrow.

“It’s an honest way.” Her mouth tightened as she continued to speak, “Honesty and generosity don’t mean the same thing, Ms. Ellis. The longer you’re in this world, the more you’ll see that.”

I didn’t know how to respond, so I just stayed silent.

“Twenty two years ago, there was another woman,” she began, her voice coming out steady which made me feel more uncomfortable. “Her name isn’t important right now,” She took a brief pause, breathing in. “She belonged to a bloodline that had been scattered, deliberately broken apart and hidden away in different territories long before we came along. Someone, a long time ago, decided that bloodline needed to vanish, and they carried out that plan thoroughly.”

“Scattered for what reason?” I asked, confusion taking all over my brain.

“That’s part of what I can’t tell you tonight,” she replied, an edge creeping into her words.

I pressed my lips tightly together, holding back the urge to question her further. Pushing too hard this early would only make her shut down, and I wasn’t in any way prepared to walk away with even fewer answers.

“Go on,” I said instead.

“She was bound to a wolf, just as you were bound to Zane. During that binding ceremony, her mark reacted the same way yours did, visibly and involuntarily. It was the kind of reaction that went beyond an ordinary bond.” Her gaze remained fixed on mine. “She died shortly after. I’m not going to tell you how she died just yet, but just be aware that it wasn’t an accident.”

My fingers curled against my lap, biting my skin, not having expected her to say that. The room growing colder as her words sank deeper into my mind.

“And you think I’m connected to her,” I asked, trying to understand what she meant for myself, and not expecting an answer. “To whatever bloodline she came from.”

“I don’t just think it. I know it’s a possibility,” she clarified. “But I need you to understand that there’s a difference between possibility and certainty, and that distinction is crucial.”

She leaned back slightly, allowing the silence to settle between us. “There’s an archive. A tangible record preserved by the old wolf councils before everything fell apart, documenting different family trees, bloodlines, and all the information certain people wanted to protect while others wanted to erase. If that archive still exists, and honestly I believe it does, it could provide real answers. Not hunches. And definitely not bits and pieces pieced together from a strange reaction during a single ceremony.”

“Where is this archive you’re talking about?” I asked, leaning forward.

“I don’t have an exact location,” she admitted. “I have a general idea of where it used to be, but that doesn’t mean I know where it is now, twenty plus years after the apocalypse.” A thin smile, completely devoid of any sort of humour, appeared on her lips. “You ask questions like you’re looking for neat conclusions. This story isn’t a tidy one sweetheart.”

“If you can’t give me all the details, then share what you do know,” I insisted, my voice coming out sharper than I intended. My fingers tightening against my knees as my frustration grew. “So far, you’ve told me about a woman, a bloodline, and an archive that might not even exist. I almost died after something called my name like it had known me my whole life, and you’re treating this information like it’s a rationed item.”

“It is actually rationed,” she said with a level of calm that made my irritation worsen. “Information is the most dangerous currency in this world, and I’ve spent my life learning just how much a person can handle at once. You’re not ready for everything right now. She wasn’t ready either.”

The way she referred to the woman made my stomach tighten and my skin prickle.

“You keep saying that like you knew her,” I said slowly. “Not like you just read about her, but like you actually knew who she was.”

Naomi paused, the sudden silence stretching between the both of us.

“I did know her,” she said, confessing after a long moment had passed.

My fingers went still against my knees. “And you didn’t stop what happened to her,” I pressed, the pieces beginning to fall into place with an uncomfortable clarity.

“I wasn’t in a position to prevent it,” she replied. And for the first time since I’d entered this room, something in her expression faltered. A flicker of what seemed like deep seated grief crossing her face before she was able to regain her control. “Since then, I’ve dedicated every year to ensuring I’d be ready to intervene if something like that ever occurred again.”

I took a moment to digest that. My thoughts returning to the hint of regret I’d noticed earlier, and suddenly, the pieces I’d been struggling to put together began making sense to me.

“You chose my family,” I stated, scrunching my face. “For this debt. This whole arrangement, you’re the one who designed it long ago, before the outbreak and before any of this chaos started.”

“Yes.”

“Not at random.”

“No.”

My heartbeat grew louder as I stared at her. “You knew what I could be, didn’t you? Long before I even figured it out myself. Maybe…” I drew in a deep breath. “…even before I was born.”

“I had my suspicions,” she replied, maintaining her calm demeanour, though I caught the slight tension in her voice. “But suspicion isn’t the same as proof, Ms. Ellis. I had bits and pieces, a family lineage matching certain patterns I’d been investigating for years. But nothing concrete. I couldn’t act on it without revealing exactly what I was searching for and to whom.”

“So, you waited. You set up a debt and bided your time for decades, bringing me here as soon as it was useful to confirm what you suspected.” I stated, disbelief starting to show in my voice.

“I brought you here because the debt was due, and the alliance needed strengthening. And, yes, I admit, part of me wanted to see if I was right,” she said, holding my gaze steadily. “I won’t apologize for that. Apologizing would be disingenuous, and I promised myself I wouldn’t lie to you once I had the chance to share this information.”

I shifted in my seat, my hands suddenly feeling awkward in my lap. I didn’t know what to do with them, or with everything I’d just heard. It was different from how I’d felt in my mother’s kitchen three weeks ago, when everyone had been making decisions about my life without giving me a say in any of it. Being picked out at random was one thing. And then deliberately chosen, almost as though someone had examined and categorised me before I’d even taken my first steps, was something else entirely.

My throat tightened as I tried to make sense of everything playing before me. I still hadn’t figured out which part disturbed me more.

“Proof,” I said, struggling to keep my voice steady, hearing it come out rougher than I’d intended. “You mentioned that proof is what got her killed.”

“It is.”

“So, what happens to me if there’s solid evidence about who I really am?”

Naomi fell quiet for a long moment. And when she finally spoke, it wasn’t with the clear answer I’d been waiting for.

“The debt was never solely about the alliance,” she said. “Not entirely, anyway. I let everyone think that, including Zane and his father before him, because it was simpler than the full truth. The truth puts people in danger the moment they know it.”

“Then what was it really about?”

Before she could respond, a sharp knock on the door interrupted us. A guard burst in, breathless, with a crumpled piece of paper in hand.

Naomi took the note the moment he got to her side and quickly read through it. Her expression didn’t betray much, but I noticed her posture stiffening, her shoulders drawing back as she finished reading. After a moment, she folded it and set it aside.

“That’s enough for tonight,” she said, rising up to her feet.

I stared at her, my fingers pressing into the arms of the chair. Just like that? After everything she’d admitted, she was ending the conversation without giving me the one answer I’d been waiting for.

“You need to get some rest.”

“Naomi…”

“The wall patrol just discovered something near the perimeter,” she interrupted, already moving quickly towards the door. “It wasn’t there an hour ago.”