Secretly Married to the Lycan Tycoon

Deeds at Dawn

I don’t sleep.

The clinic has a sound it makes around three in the morning—pipes sighing, the old fridge ticking like a metronome, the city whispering through the alley grate. The boy under the blanket breathes like his ribs are still deciding if they belong to him.

Noah returns from the roof as quiet as weather. “Two more on perimeter,” he says. “Powder’s gone from the threshold, cameras up, alley clean.”

“Thank you.” I check the line on the boy’s arm where the wire bit him. The skin is angry but behaving. “We’ll need antibiotics, tetanus, soup, and a bureaucracy that knows when to mind its business.”

“The first three are easy,” Noah says. “For the fourth, we have lawyers.”

My phone pulses once. Unknown: Creativity ends at dawn.

It’s not signed. It doesn’t have to be.

“Neighbors,” I tell the room. “The kind that walk in other people’s gardens.”

Noah’s mouth doesn’t move, but his gaze sharpens. “We’ll be here when they try.”

Dawn comes in gray and then gold, slowly, like it doesn’t want to decide. The kettle clicks off. I pour hot water over tea leaves and gratitude. The boy stirs and blinks at the ceiling like it borrowed a sky overnight.

“Hey,” I say. “You’re safe.”

He swallows. “Hurts,” he whispers, flexing his fingers like he’s testing the world for splinters.

“It would be weird if it didn’t,” I say. “Soup soon. Do you have a name I should call you until you tell me your real one?”

He thinks and shrugs. “Pip,” he says, because children do that when they don’t want to be found.

“Pip it is.” I dress the wound again, slow and careful. The silver scar on my wrist is quiet, like a cat pretending not to watch a door.

At six, someone knocks—not with fists, but with authority. Noah opens, and two people step in: a woman in a city inspector’s blazer clutching a clipboard like a shield, and a man with an expression that says he enjoys saying no more than coffee.

“Dr. Xi?” the woman asks. “We received multiple anonymous complaints overnight. Questions about your license, safety procedures, sanitation.”

“Of course you did,” I say, because I’m too tired to varnish the world. I pull the laminated binder from the shelf—the one that has saved this clinic more times than medicine has. “Licenses up front. Handwashing station there. Sharps disposal here. Last inspection signed by—” I glance at the name tag “—oh, your office. Lovely to see you again.”

Her mouth twitches. She flips pages and finds what she expected: compliance. The man with her prowls two steps and frowns at the sink like it insulted his mother.

“Complaint also alleged… moon theatrics,” he reads, without looking up, as if the phrase should wilt in the air.

“I don’t do theatrics,” I say. “I do medicine. Adults with politics keep confusing the two.”

He looks up then, meets eyes that do not intend to be impressed, and grunts. The inspector marks a clean check, then closes the binder with a clap that sounds like a door politely refusing to shut on my fingers.

“Everything’s in order,” she says. “We’ll file it. Try to get less popular.”

“I’ll work on being invisible,” I say. “It’s a growth industry.”

They leave. Noah watches them to the edge of the block and back. “Round one,” he says.

“Breakfast?” I ask Pip, because surviving bureaucracy will not feed a child.

He eats oatmeal like it’s the point of life. Halfway through, a rumble fills the alley and the back door opens onto a square of practical miracles: a generator and two men in Walcott work jackets, all competence and straps.

“Delivery for Noor Street,” one says. “Generator, fuel, blankets. Keys after signature.”

I want to cry. I say, “This way,” and tuck Pip’s blanket around his shoulders and lead the men across three streets and a corner where the city changes flavor. Noor Street looks like a line someone drew with a tired hand and forgot to color in. The orphanage is halfway down, shutters drawn, hope nailed like a sign above the door.

The landlord is waiting, arms crossed, thick neck red with importance. “You can’t put that here,” he says, before anyone can introduce themselves. “It’s a liability.”

“It’s a necessity,” I say. “And it’s no longer yours to worry about.”

His laugh is small and sure. “The lease says—”

A black SUV ghosts to the curb. Ashford steps out with a folder and a look of pleasant finality. “Good morning,” he says, like a man offering a cappuccino. “You must be Mr. Pollard. We represent the Noor Street Community Trust, which closed on this building as of seven forty-three a.m. Here is the deed, here are your funds, here is your release paperwork, and here is a list of things you no longer say no to.”

Pollard’s mouth works. “You can’t just—”

“We can,” Ashford says. “We did. And we brought a generator.”

Mrs. Bennett opens the door like a woman trying not to bless a lawyer. “Dr. Xi,” she says. “Is this…?”

“It’s heat,” I say. “And a deed.”

The landlord flails and then, seeing the notary behind Ashford and the quiet delight on the faces of the men setting the generator, flails less. “Fine,” he mutters, because grudges are a currency he can still afford. “Just… keep the noise down.”

“Noise keeps children alive,” Mrs. Bennett says. “You can file a complaint with God.”

She would. I love her. I show the team where to place the generator, sign three places, nod at two, and pretend my hands don’t shake. When it’s done, warmth hums under the walls like the building grew a second heart. Babies cry because babies do that when good things happen too.

My phone buzzes: Arden: Board breakfast at eight. Can you make it for fifteen minutes? One photo, one statement. Then I’ll drive you back myself.

On another day I’d say no. On this one, I owe him a canvas and he’s paid for paint.

Fifteen, I text. Make the food edible.

Astonishing request, he replies. I’ll attempt eggs that remember chickens.

Noah ferries Pip back to the clinic with the promise of cartoons on low and a blanket that smells like clean cotton and safety. I take a breath in air that isn’t shivering and let gratitude land, then get in the SUV with Ashford because the morning decided to be a parade.

The Walcott tower’s thirty-second floor smells like coffee and three kinds of money. The boardroom is glass and steel and a table long enough to lie to twenty people at once. Men and women in suits weigh each other with the casual brutality of professionals who confuse war with work.

Arden stands at the head of the table in a shirt that cost a clinic’s monthly rent and an expression that owes nothing to anyone here. His eyes find me and something uncalculable ticks one notch quieter under his skin.

“This is Dr. Lynn Xi,” he says when I cross the threshold, easy as weather. “She kept Roth Hartman alive last night. She keeps people alive this city can’t afford to lose.”

He doesn’t say my wife. He doesn’t say exiled healer or Moon-Chosen or anything that tastes like a headline. This room doesn’t get those words.

A man with too much cologne and a jaw that takes itself seriously raises two fingers as if asking to be called on. “Harding,” he says, as if the name should clear space. “We’ve received calls about optics. The gala. The alley. The… heroic doctor.” His gaze does a precise, insulting sweep of me and stops just short of letting me exist. “We need the right story, Arden.”

“The right story,” Arden says, and it sounds like silk wrapped around a wire, “is that we support first responders and people who respond first.”

A woman farther down the table—diamond small, eyes sharp—leans in. “And the trust purchase?” she asks. “I have three messages from donors asking if Noor Street is a new philanthropic direction or… something else.”

“It’s a direction,” he says. “Keeping small people alive keeps cities alive. Also, I like blankets.”

A ripple of finance laughs. Harding doesn’t. “And the security breach?”

“Contained,” Arden says. “Roth is stable. We have evidence the shooter used a toxin not standard to human targets.”

A different quiet settles. The kind that means some of these people know what wolfsbane is, and some only know that they don’t want to.

“Arden,” says a voice so smooth I can feel the price tag. Veronica Hale glides in late, because of course she does, seating herself as if the chair was born wanting her. “I brought a statement from the Hale Foundation pledging additional support to your city guardians initiative.” She turns to me with a smile that would flay a careless finger. “Dr. Xi. What a night for heroism.”

“Veronica,” Arden says, neutral to the point of insult.

“Ms. Hale,” I correct gently. “Donate blankets instead of adjectives. They don’t itch.”

A few subtle smiles flicker around the table. Veronica’s doesn’t move. “We’ll send cashmere,” she says.

“Send cotton,” I say. “It washes.”

Arden lifts a hand before either of us can sharpen further. “Photo,” he says to the room. “One, then we work.” He gestures me to his side. I stand there because I agreed to, and because fifteen minutes buys me more generators than pride ever did.

The photo is clean—two people who look like they know how to build something that won’t fall over in a storm. Afterward, Arden leans to me. “Eggs that remembered chickens,” he murmurs, nodding toward a side table where a chef has done something respectable with heat.

I eat a forkful to prove I’m a good sport. It tastes like a kitchen that likes itself.

Noah slips in at my shoulder with a file and a line between his brows. “Lab,” he says low. “The aconitum came from a commercial batch used by three buyers in the last six months: a boutique herbarium called Greyroot, a private clinic with Council ties, and a wellness startup funded by Hale Ventures.”

Veronica’s last name drops between us like a coin into a well.

“You’re sure?” I ask.

“Supply chain says so,” Noah says. “Also—your wire.” He flips a photo. The silver filament on my tray gleams under magnification, etched with microscopic crescents like a hallmark. “Signature matches ceremonial alloys stamped at the Stone Court armory.”

The room tilts. For a second the board hum, the eggs, the glass—all of it goes fuzzy around the edges and I see the ritual circle again, the silver threads that caught and then stuttered, the way pain can be braided into promise by hands that don’t love either.

“Someone inside,” I say, to no one and to the moon. “Or someone using their toys.”

Arden’s jaw tightens once. He reaches—not for me, but for the file—and shuts it like a man deciding which fires get air.

“Thank you,” he tells Noah. “Quietly. Ashford will start a paper trail wide enough to walk a tank through. Rhea gets the parts that live online.”

“Already in her inbox,” Noah says, and evaporates.

I check the time. Fifteen minutes. I keep my end. “I have to go,” I tell Arden. “Pip needs breakfast that doesn’t come in a paper cup, and Mrs. Bennett has a generator to fall in love with.”

“I’ll take you,” he says, immediate and unbothered by the reaction it earns from three people at the table who think taking is a verb with ownership baked in. “Harding, run the projections without me. Veronica, send cotton.”

Her smile is pure civility. “Of course.”

We reach the door. A man in a tailored suit steps into our path—gray hair, eyes like bare ice, the scent of old pines clinging to his collar. Elder Celes looks perfectly at home in a room that should have the decency to refuse him.

“Mr. Walcott,” he says. “Dr. Xi. The Council would appreciate your presence at dusk. An informal conversation about last night’s… creativity.”

My phone vibrates. Unknown: Dusk.

“Informal,” I repeat, as if the word has ever applied to anything Celes does.

“Neighbors,” he says, with the soft smile men wear when they are about to feed you rules and call it bread. “Bring your ring. And your restraint.”

“My restraint travels with me,” I say. “My ring decides where it goes.”

Celes’s gaze flicks to my wrist, not my hand. His mouth moves a millimeter. Approval? Threat? With him the shapes are the same.

“Dusk,” he repeats, and moves on, leaving the smell of cold order behind him.

The elevator doors close around us. For a floor and a half, we listen to the building breathe.

“You don’t have to go,” Arden says.

“I think I do,” I say. “Silence is an answer bullies like.”

He nods once, not pleased, not surprised. “Then we’ll go.”

“We?” I look at him.

“We,” he says simply. “Neighbors.”

Downstairs, the car waits. Outside, the day has chosen gold. The city pretends to be only human. On Noor Street, a building hums with heat where it didn’t yesterday. In my pocket, my phone glows with a single word that thinks it’s a clock.

Dusk.

I close my hand around it, and the silver scar on my wrist warms like a thread tugged tight.