Bound To The Broken Alpha (Amy and Daniel) novel Chapter 75

Chapter 75 New Reliance

AMY

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Med school became the one place I could think straight. So I went there more frequently. The classes were hard, the hours were longer than I expected, but everything there had rules and goals. In the hospital wing, people called me by my name, not by the name I’d take when I married into the Carters. For a few hours each day, I was just a student learning how to fix things.

Words moved faster than I expected. It started with one of the junior guards who came in after a training exercise. He’d taken a bad claw to the forearm. It was deep, jagged, and bleeding more than it should.

I was on duty that night and scrubbed in without thinking. The wound needed careful cleaning and precise suturing; the guard was pale and stiff, but I finished the dressing neatly.

By morning, someone in the records had mentioned my name. By the next week, the guards were bringing in injuries specifically requesting me. It wasn’t arrogance, it was practical.

I had learned how wolf flesh healed differently, where infections started, which herbs slowed regeneration. I applied everything I’d learned with patients who trusted me because they’d seen results.

That attention changed how certain people looked at me. Some of the professors who had been polite but distant began to nod when I walked by. People in the lecture hall stopped whispering and started asking questions.

The guards, who had once hardly acknowledged my presence, now paused to salute me when they passed. It was a small shift, but it mattered.

One evening, after a long shift, a senior guard was brought in. His shoulder had been ripped in a fight and had deep gashes and torn muscles. He was dangerous to the pack, but he was also one of our own, and the med team treated him like any patient.

I scrubbed in. The room smelled of antiseptic and iron. The guard muttered curses between clenched teeth, but he didn’t complain when I examined the wound and began debriding the tissue.

It was a difficult repair. The tendon had been nicked and needed careful alignment. I worked with steady hands while the surgeon coached me. When we finished and bandaged him, the surgeon nodded. “Good work,” he said. “You didn’t hesitate.”

That evening, a few of the guards lingered outside the med bay. One said something like, “She’s good with claws. That last stitch saved his arm.” I didn’t join their conversation. I rinsed instruments, logged the case notes, and went back to the student room to study. Still, I felt the change but in the way people now trusted me with their bodies.

A quiet night at the archive should have been a calm end to the day. I went there looking for references on wolf anatomy because I wanted to cross–check a healing technique I’d read about in an old field manual.

The archive was a small room under the faculty building, lit by a single lamp and lined with wooden shelves. The librarian glanced up when I entered, then returned to her ledger.

I pulled down a volume on old pack histories more out of curiosity than necessity. I flipped through pages on lineage and customs. Then, in a box of older texts, I found something else.

It was a brittle manuscript wrapped in a faded ribbon and labeled in neat script: House Lineages and Crests, pre–Reformation. It wasn’t what I’d come for, but the cover looked promising, so I took it to a table and opened it carefully.

18:44 Thu, Dec 25 GD

Chapter 75 New Reliance

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44 Finished

The book was a record of families, symbols, and a few scattered notes about old bloodlines. There were sketches of crests, small watercolored shields next to names I recognized from history lectures. I read names I’d heard in passing, then turned a page and stopped.

There, drawn in ink that had browned with time, was a small shield with a central stone and a ring of light

Keepers of the Golden Light. painted around it. The illustration was labeled: Moonstone Lineage –

Below the heading was a short paragraph about wolves whose blood had been noted for rare aura at certain rites and the roles those families played centuries ago. The language was careful, academic, the kind that tried to explain belief in practical terms.

My fingers brushed the page. I knew that crest. I knew those shapes. I had seen them in a photograph once. It was the image of my mother wearing the pendant. It had been one of the few things she’d left me. I had kept it hidden, worn it when I needed to remember who I was beyond Daniel and the house. Mark and Clara didn’t know I had it back.

I checked the pendant again with my mind’s eye, there was a small stone set in a ring, the metal worn smooth where a chain looped through. I reached into my pocket without thinking. The pendant was there, warm against my palm. It had been tucked under my shirt all day.

The text described the lineage matter–of–factly: families who carried a trait marked by an unusual light some elders called “the stone’s echo.” That line went on about responsibilities, about leadership and a form of influence that wasn’t brute force. It was careful not to claim miracles. It used words like “heritage” and “obligation,” but the implication was clear.

I read the paragraph twice, then again. My head felt suddenly loud. If the book’s account matched the pendant, then the pendant was not only an heirloom. It was proof of blood. It was more than family lore. It was evidence that my mother came from a line with a rare trait.

I closed the book and sat with it for a long time. I felt a mix of things like fear, yes, but also a recognition. If it was true, then the strength I’d shown in healing wasn’t purely study. Maybe some of it followed me. Maybe those late nights in the med bay had tapped into something older I didn’t fully understand.

I told the librarian I was taking the book to my room to study. She didn’t object; the archive’s rules allowed students to consult delicate texts in quiet spaces. I carried the manuscript under my arm and walked back through the empty corridors as my steps echoed in the hallway.

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