Secretly Married to the Lycan Tycoon

Paper, Moon, and a Name

“Show me the papers,” I say.

Arden doesn’t smile like a victor; he tips his head like a man agreeing to terms. “Ashford,” he says into the air, not loudly, and a door I didn’t notice swings open.

A trim man in a charcoal suit appears with a tablet hugged to his chest and rain on his spectacles. “Sir.”

“Civil ceremony pack and a short-form prenup,” Arden says. “Add a philanthropic rider. Ms. Xi has specific needs.”

I hate that needs sounds like weakness in this room. “Requirements,” I correct. “Noor Street’s fuel, three months up front. Purchase, not donation—buy the building and put it in a community trust so no landlord plays God. My clinic gets a year of supplies at hospital rates, delivered weekly. And I keep control of my patient list. No PR stunts.”

Ashford doesn’t blink. He scribbles with a stylus. “Contingencies?”

“If she walks, the trust stands,” Arden says before I can speak. “If I walk, it doubles.”

I look at him. “That’s performative.”

“It’s persuasive.” He turns to Ashford. “Add a stipend to the clinic escrow—monthly. Give Noor Street a generator. And carve out a protected anonymity clause. Ms. Xi’s work is not a backdrop.”

Ashford’s mouth twitches, the legal man’s version of surprise. “Yes, sir.”

There’s a rap on the inner door and a woman in a city clerk’s blue blazer pokes in, carrying a leather folder and the expression of someone who has seen too many late-night vows. “Mr. Walcott? I was told there’d be a civil ceremony in the next fifteen minutes or I should go photograph the mayor shaking hands with the orchestra.”

“Stay,” Arden says. “We’re almost there.”

The clerk eyes my wet hair and his dry confidence, then shrugs. “The city thanks you for your impulse control.” She flips the folder open on a low table. “Names as they appear on your IDs.”

“Lynn Xi,” I say. My voice sounds steadier than I feel.

“Arden Matthew Walcott,” he says, and it hangs there like a brand on the air. My wolf lifts her head at the way he fills the syllables; I tell her to sit.

Ashford scrolls the first draft across the tablet and hands it to me. The headers read clean: Pre-Marital Agreement; Charitable Trust Rider; Confidentiality Addendum. I move through them like arteries, looking for clots.

“One year,” I say. “Escrow funded tonight. Clinic independence explicitly stated. No editorial control over my statements if they involve patient care.”

“Agreed,” Ashford says, already typing. “Public appearances limited to board-related events, charity galas, and two interviews per quarter, both pre-cleared with Ms. Xi.” He glances up. “No consummation clause?”

Heat touches my cheeks. “No.”

Arden’s mouth doesn’t move. “Consent remains our only rule.”

“Exit clause,” I add. “If either of us wants out before the year, we issue a joint statement with neutral language. The trust and clinic stipends remain untouched.”

“Done,” Ashford says. His fingers are quicksilver. “Sign.”

He turns the tablet to me. It waits like a dare. I skim one more time—numbers, dates, the line that says my clinic exists because I say it does. At the bottom, I sign my name. The act feels like cutting a line and stepping into deeper water.

Arden signs without theatre. The clerk slides the city forms into place, taps where we should initial, points to the license with grim cheer. “Rings?”

“No,” I say.

“Later,” he says at the same time, and our voices cross in the middle like the moonlight did and didn’t. He glances at me, the smallest apology. “You can choose what doesn’t feel like debt.”

The clerk produces a square of marble with a brass seal perched on top. “Vows are optional for civil ceremonies,” she recites. “You may repeat after me or provide your own, or skip straight to signatures.”

“No spectacle,” I say.

“No spectacle,” he agrees.

We stand in a triangle of lamplight. The clerk clears her throat. “Do you, Arden Matthew Walcott, take Lynn Xi to be your lawfully wedded wife for a period not less than—oh, city went poetic—one year and one day, to share burdens and benefits as outlined in this agreement?”

“I do,” he says, and the words aren’t soft. They’re firm enough to sit on.

“And do you, Lynn Xi, take Arden Matthew Walcott—”

“I do.”

Simple. Surgical. A joining like a suture instead of a hymn.

The clerk stamps the license. The sound is small and final. “Congratulations,” she says. “Try not to make me regret staying late.”

Ashford slides the signed documents into folders. “Escrows are funded,” he says, glancing at his phone. “Trust filed. The Noor Street building changes hands in the morning. My team will deliver keys and the generator by noon.” He looks at me, unexpectedly human for a second. “Your clinic supply order will meet you tomorrow.”

The ledger in my bag gets lighter—not empty, but lighter. Relief makes me giddy and ashamed; it feels like selling something I can’t name and buying time I can.

My phone buzzes. A text from a number tagged Rhea—the hacker who owes me three favors and a batch of aspirin. Saw the sirens. You okay? Also your ex is trending. She links a feed. Clay stands on a dais in a different ballroom across town, shaking hands with Veronica Hale beneath a Leadership for the Ridge banner. My throat tightens, then steadies.

“Roth?” I ask, to clear the taste of old hurt.

Arden glances at his own screen. “Stable.”

“Good.” I nod at the closed door to the main event. “Your three hours start now?”

“They started when you said show me the papers.” He offers his arm like a gentleman and a general. “Shall we give the room something tidy to talk about?”

I look at the arm, at the hand that signs checks big enough to change a street’s weather. Consent is one of our rules. I set my fingers lightly on his sleeve. Heat moves through fabric like a living thing. The thin silver scar on my wrist warms, the faintest hum against my skin. I tell my bones to behave.

The ballroom receives us like a tide taking back a dropped coin. Heads turn. Cameras sharpen. A red-carpet journalist pivots on impossible heels; Arden glides us past with a nod that says later. The chandelier pours galaxy-light. Violins thread through the noise.

“Smile,” he murmurs, “like you just solved a problem nobody else could.”

“I did,” I murmur back. “Twice.”

We reach the dais where boards are won and egos fed. Arden is all effortless authority. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he says, voice filling the glass like warm bourbon, “we had a minor security incident. Thanks to quick action by city paramedics—and the woman beside me—our colleague is stable and receiving care.”

He doesn’t say healer. He says, “This is Dr. Lynn Xi.” Not my wife. Not yet. The room doesn’t need that story. It needs this one.

Polite applause rises. It turns real when the orchestra starts up again and people discover generosity in the bottom of their flutes. A councilman with careful hair claps twice as hard as necessary. A banker’s eyes grind numbers.

Arden steps down before anyone can corner him. “Two minutes in the room buys twenty in peace,” he says to me, the way you’d explain a recipe to a friend. “Dance?”

“That wasn’t part of the contract.”

“It was implied by the gala,” he says, and I can hear the smile he isn’t wearing. “Consent applies.”

“Yes,” I say, and it surprises us both.

His hand finds my shoulder blade, the other takes mine. Contact flares across my palm, a spark so clean my breath stutters. The silver scar warms again, not bright—only there. He stares at me like a man hearing a language he should recognize. I glare at the chandelier.

“You’re very calm for a man who just got married,” I say.

“I keep my panic in an indexed file,” he says. “It visits when I’m alone.”

“Efficient,” I say.

“A compliment from you,” he says softly, “is worth two from the mayor.”

We move. He is good—unobtrusive, precise, the way some surgeons are with scalpel and suture. It is easy to let my feet obey the line his body draws. The city is a storm behind the glass. Inside, pretending keeps everyone dry.

Half a turn later I feel a gaze strike the back of my neck like cold rain. Veronica Hale drifts into our orbit in silver silk, smile sharp enough to peel paint. On her arm, Clay looks like ambition dressed in a suit I used to recognize.

“Mr. Walcott.” Veronica’s voice rings like a bell in church—pure, practiced. “You’ve brought a new friend.”

Arden’s hand tightens a fraction at my back. “Veronica.”

Clay’s eyes find my face, then drop to my wrist like he can see the scar through skin and glove. Regret crosses him—real this time, ugly and brief. “Lynn,” he says, as if the syllable has become heavier since he last used it.

“Mr. Mercer.” I keep my voice polite enough to be lethal. “Congratulations on your Leadership banner.”

Veronica’s lashes dip—the smallest acknowledgement that the knife landed. “And what do you do, Dr. Xi?” she asks brightly, like a teacher giving a doomed child a chance.

“I make sure people who can’t afford to be inconvenient stay alive anyway,” I say. “Tonight I also kept one of Mr. Walcott’s men from dying in his own blood. You?”

For a heartbeat her face is clean, all the lacquer stripped off. Then the smile returns, impeccable. “Fund the programs that make your work possible.”

“Then we both had a good night,” I say.

Clay shifts, caught between ten different versions of himself. “Lynn,” he starts, the old name tasting wrong now, “I never meant—”

“You meant what you said,” I answer, and the moon inside me—hurt and proud—stays still. “The rest is noise.”

I feel Arden breathe a quiet approval, not for the slap but for the control. “Enjoy your evening,” he tells them, neutral to the point of insult.

We turn away. Cameras catch the angle: Walcott, the woman in the rain jacket turned evening-acceptable with a line of silk at the throat, an ex-alpha and a silver heiress framed in the background like yesterday’s headline.

“Efficient,” I murmur.

“Practice,” he says.

We make it to the edge of the floor before another figure ghosts into our path—gray hair like steel wool, eyes the color of bare ice. Elder Celes does not belong in this room and appears to know it; he carries the human city like a distaste on his tongue.

“Mr. Walcott.” His voice has edges. “Charmed. The council appreciates your… civic enthusiasm.”

“The council appreciates whatever photographs keep its donors comfortable,” Arden says blandly, and I can feel the presence of a much larger animal under that tone. “Elder Celes, this is Dr. Lynn Xi.”

Celes’s gaze flickers to my wrist and back. He does not register surprise. He registers accounting. “Doctor,” he says. “Resourceful, I hear.”

“Adaptive,” I say, because he used the other word like a sentence.

“Mm.” He lifts his glass as if to toast the chandelier. “The moon appreciates creativity. It punishes hubris.”

“Good thing I’m not hubristic,” I say.

His mouth barely moves. “You are young.”

“So were you,” I say, before sense can stop me.

Arden’s hand is steady at my back. Celes takes our measure like a surveyor looking for fault lines. “Enjoy your evening,” he says finally, the way surgeons say this will sting. He moves on, collecting favors as he goes.

“I don’t like him,” I say when he’s far enough that I only have to be brave for myself.

“Then we have that in common,” Arden says.

We do another round of the room because optics eat patience. My feet ache. The ledger in my bag is less heavy and the scar on my wrist is more present and none of it makes sense. A waitress slides by with a tray of champagne. I take water. Arden takes nothing.

“Your three hours are almost done,” he says as we step into a quieter alcove crowned with an orchid that looks more expensive than an ambulance. “When you want to leave, I’ll have a car take you wherever you like.”

“Back to the clinic.”

“Of course.”

Silence folds around us for a beat. He looks past me at the rain scudding down the glass, and for a moment I see him without the armor—just a man doing math against a world that refuses to balance.

“Roth will have a job when he wakes up?” I ask.

“If he wants it,” he says. “If not, a pension. Face is not the only thing I hate losing.”

I nod, a redistribution of something I can’t name. “You handled Veronica well.”

“You handled her better.”

“She’ll bite later.”

“Then we’ll have better shoes,” he says, and I almost laugh.

My phone buzzes again. Rhea: your ex’s PR just posted the rejection speech with soft filter lol. want me to bury it under cat rescues & orchestra flop memes? I text back yes and thank you and don’t get sued.

The orchestra swells. The mayor’s laugh peals from the other end of the room. Somewhere a camera catches us in profile, and for one dizzy second the image on a passing screen is two strangers who look like they were always meant to be standing in the same light.

It will be useful. Nothing more.

“Mrs. Walcott,” a breathless assistant says, materializing with a tray I didn’t order—sparkling water, lemon slices, a tiny dish of almonds. “For your blood sugar. Mr. Walcott said—”

I look at Arden. He isn’t looking at me; he’s looking at the room, but his mouth is softer by a millimeter.

“Thank you,” I say to the assistant, and take the almonds because pride is not a vitamin.

“Ready to escape?” he murmurs.

“Please.”

He moves us toward the service corridor. At the threshold, the city outside thunders like an ocean. Someone shouts our names from across the marble—some reporter who smells a story deeper than headlines. I glance back.

For a breath the chandelier catches my wrist just so. The silver scar answers with a ghost of light.

Arden sees it. I know he does because the air changes—the quiet of a predator recognizing a shape in the grass it can’t yet name.

“Lynn,” he says, not Mr. or Doctor or Ms., just my name, the first time it sounds like a shared thing.

“Yes?”

“Nothing,” he says, but nothing carries weight. “Car’s waiting.”

We step into the corridor, into the rain-hum, into the kind of night that writes contracts it expects you to break.

Behind us, the room goes back to pretending the moon isn’t listening. Ahead, the city breathes, and my clinic ledger lies in my bag like a truce.