Savage Aquisition

Stanford Nights

Scarlett had barely slept, barely eaten. The anticipation that had thrummed through her after texting Penny and adding Cael to her favorites had curdled overnight, the reality of what she was becoming sinking in like a chill. She’d hovered over her phone, thumb twitching to text Cael, but every time the urge spiked, the terror of losing herself made her set it down—hard enough, once, to crack the case. It wasn’t just fear keeping her isolated. Her skin hummed when she thought his name, a physical pull toward the bond that terrified her more than the wolf. She wanted to go to him, to submit to whatever he offered—and that desire made her lock her doors and draw her curtains, fighting a hunger that had nothing to do with meat. The future came at her in waves: exhilarating, then suffocating.

Scarlett’s penthouse was a glass-and-concrete aerie perched on the forty-ninth floor, the kind of place designed to make you feel untouchable. The penthouse was technically two floors: the forty-ninth, and above it, the private rooftop terrace she’d turned into her sanctuary. Tonight, all it did was amplify her isolation. She’d texted Penny hours ago, then spent the time since pacing between the kitchen island and the window wall, every pass bringing her closer to the edge. She’d barely slept, barely eaten, but her nerves vibrated with a manic, desperate focus: if she could rehearse the conversation enough, maybe she’d survive it.

The private elevator chimed. Scarlett froze. She watched Penny’s reflection slide into view in the glass, hair windblown from the rooftop parking. Penny was in her usual uniform: battered pea coat, faded jeans, boots scuffed to hell. She carried a grocery bag in one arm, and a bottle of tequila in the other, and her expression was equal parts concern and mischief.

“Jesus, Scar, when you said ‘urgent’ I thought you were going to be bleeding out on the floor,” Penny called, letting herself in. “Not standing here looking like you’re about to jump.”

Scarlett forced a smile. “Give it five minutes.” She tried to sound like her old self, but the words tasted brittle.

Penny set the tequila down, shrugged out of her coat, and surveyed the apartment with a low whistle. “Is this where you keep your henchmen? Or just the bodies?”

Scarlett managed a laugh. She could feel herself softening, just a little, at the familiar cadence of Penny’s voice. “Neither. I keep the bodies at the data center.”

Penny grinned. “Good girl. So. What’s up?”

Scarlett blinked. How could she possibly explain it? Her life was a fractured timeline now: before Cael, after Cael, and the feverish, blood-bright present in between. “It’s complicated,” she said, pouring tequila into two shot glasses. “But I need you to listen. And I need you to believe me.”

Penny’s gaze sharpened. She took the glass, knocked it back, and nodded. “Hit me.”

Scarlett stared into the city’s red-lit sprawl. For a moment, she hesitated—then began at the only place that made sense.

“Do you remember Stanford?”

Penny snorted. “Do I remember Stanford? I spent four years wishing for the sweet release of death in the presence of your color-coded Post-its.”

Scarlett smiled, but it faded as the memory pulled her under.

The heat of move-in day pressed against Scarlett's skin like a physical weight, August in Palo Alto turning the air to soup. She stood in the doorway of her dorm room, surveying the chaos with the same precision she applied to quarterly projections. Boxes labeled by category: CLOTHING—FALL, CLOTHING—WINTER, ACADEMIC—BUSINESS, ACADEMIC—GENERAL. Everything in its place. Everything controlled.

Her roommate was already there, sprawled across the unmade bed with a bag of gummy worms and a laptop balanced on her knees. She looked up as Scarlett entered, glasses sliding down her nose, brown hair escaping from a messy bun.

"Penelope Emerson," she said, extending a hand without getting up. "But everyone calls me Penny. Except my grandmother, who calls me Penelope Ann when she's mad, which is always."

"Scarlett Lilli Sinclair." She shook the offered hand, noting the ink stains on Penny's fingers, the worn hem of her jeans. Scholarship student, probably. First generation.

Penny's eyes narrowed as she studied Scarlett's face—really studied it, the way people rarely do. "You look like you're about to organize my chaos, Sinclair. Fair warning: I don't organize. I excavate."

"I wasn't going to—"

"Yes, you were." Penny grinned, tossing her a bag of gummy worms. "You look like you need these more than I do. Also, you have that 'I'm going to alphabetize the spice rack' energy. I respect it, but I don't share it."

Scarlett caught the bag automatically, surprised to find herself smiling. "I don't alphabetize spice racks. I organize them by cuisine type."

"Oh my god," Penny laughed, the sound bright and genuine. "We're going to be friends, Sinclair. Whether you like it or not."

They were. Somehow, improbably, they were.

It started with small things. Penny sharing her last ramen when Scarlett was too busy with coursework to shop. Scarlett helping Penny navigate the business school prerequisites that seemed designed to weed out students like her. Late nights in their cramped dorm room, Penny's side a disaster of books and coffee cups, Scarlett's side neat as a pin, both of them talking until 3 AM about everything and nothing.

But Penny saw things. That was the thing about her—she noticed.

She noticed when Scarlett woke up with dirt under her nails and no memory of leaving the room. She noticed the way Scarlett flinched at sudden loud noises, the way she could track conversations across crowded dining halls, the way animals seemed to seek her out on campus—the squirrels that ate from her hand, the stray cats that followed her home.

"You're weird, Sinclair," Penny said one night, three months into their friendship. They were studying for midterms, or pretending to. "And I don't mean that in a bad way. I mean you're weird in a 'maybe you should tell me what's actually going on' way."

Scarlett's pen froze over her notebook. "I don't know what you mean."

"Bullshit." Penny set down her textbook, her expression serious in a way it rarely was. "You sleepwalk. You have dreams that leave you screaming. Last week, I found you on the roof at 4 AM, and you looked at me like you didn't know who I was. Like you were something else entirely."

The words hung in the air between them, heavy with truth. Scarlett hadn't spoken aloud to anyone. Not to her mother, who deflected. Not to her grandmother, who watched her with knowing eyes. But Penny saw. Penny always saw.

"I don't know what's happening to me," Scarlett whispered, the admission tasting as relief and terror mixed. "I think I'm losing my mind."

Penny was quiet for a long moment. Then she reached across the space between their beds and took Scarlett's hand. Her fingers were warm, grounding. "You're not losing your mind. But something's happening, and you don't have to face it alone. I'm here. I'm not going anywhere."

She kept her word.

When Scarlett woke up with scratches she couldn't explain, Penny made up stories about her sleepwalking into rose bushes. When Scarlett's temper flared in ways that frightened them both—furniture moving without her touching it, glass shattering in her presence—Penny helped her clean up and never mentioned it again. When the dreams came, vivid and terrifying, Penny sat up with her until dawn, talking about nothing until the fear subsided.

The night everything changed, Scarlett woke up cold.

She was naked, shivering, surrounded by redwood trees that towered into a sky just beginning to lighten with dawn. The hills above campus. She knew them, had hiked them once for a biology requirement. But she didn't remember coming here. Didn't remember leaving her bed, her room, the dorm.

Her arms were covered in scratches—deep ones, bleeding sluggishly. And her mouth tasted of copper, of something wild.

"Scarlett!"

Penny's voice, hoarse with shouting. Scarlett turned to see her roommate picking her way up the trail, hoodie clutched in her hands, face pale with fear and relief.

"Jesus Christ," Penny breathed when she reached her. "I've been looking for you for two hours. The RA almost called campus police."

"I don't—" Scarlett's voice broke. "I don't know how I got here."

"I know." Penny wrapped the hoodie around Scarlett's shoulders, gentle, careful. She didn't ask about the scratches. Didn't ask why Scarlett was naked. Just walked her back down the trail, arm around her waist, talking about the midterm they had next week, the coffee she was going to buy her, the way the sunrise looked through the trees.

At the dorm, she helped Scarlett shower, helped her dress, helped her lie down in bed. Then she pulled her desk chair close and sat watch, her hand resting on Scarlett's arm, her presence a tether to the world.

"I'm taking the job in Seattle," Penny said quietly, hours later, when the sun was fully up and Scarlett's breathing had evened out. "The one at the startup. I wasn't sure before, but I am now."

"You don't have to—"

"Yes, I do." Penny's voice was firm. "You need someone to keep you from wandering into traffic, Sinclair. And I'm not done figuring you out."

Scarlett turned her head to look at her roommate—her friend, her anchor, the only person who'd ever seen the cracks and chosen to stay. "Thank you," she whispered.

Penny squeezed her hand. "Don't thank me yet. We haven't even gotten to the part where I make you try my terrible cooking."

They both laughed, the sound shaky but real. And at that moment, with the morning light streaming through their window and the weight of secrets pressing down on them both, Scarlett knew she'd found something rare. Something worth protecting.

Even if she couldn't protect herself.

Scarlett blinked, the memory disorienting. Penny was watching her closely now, arms folded, waiting for the rest.

Scarlett poured them each another shot, then set the bottle aside. Her hands were steadier now. “After graduation, it got worse. The blackouts, the cravings.” My voice went threadbare, more confession than memory. “It wasn’t just blood and raw meat. I wanted to be obliterated. Held down, forced until I couldn’t remember my own name, choked so hard I saw stars. The violence of my wolf got tangled with something else—something darker. I wanted to surrender, to be split apart, to be nothing but nerve endings and need. I tried to bury it, but you know how that turned out.”

Penny’s voice was soft now, the sarcasm stripped away. “You don’t have to tell me if you’re not ready.”

Scarlett shook her head. “I need to. Because something happened. Well, someone happened.”

She started with the gala and didn't stop. Cael. The mate bond. The hunger she hadn't had words for until now. The way she'd come home that night and stood in her shower until the water ran cold, trying to scrub something off her skin that wasn't there. Her mother's face when she'd finally asked the question she'd been circling her whole life. The history her grandmother laid bare. All of it, finally out in the open air between them.

When she finished, the room was silent.

Penny poured herself a final shot, then said slowly, “You’re telling me you think you’re a werewolf.”

“I should be calling the men in white with the jacket,” Penny said, her voice sharp with the skepticism Scarlett knew well from every argument they’d ever had. “This is insane, you know that.” She paused, searching Scarlett’s face. “But I’ve seen the impossible before.”

Scarlett waited for the punchline. It didn’t come.

Penny just nodded. “Okay. What do you need me to do?”

The question hit Scarlett harder than any accusation or doubt. “I—what?”

Penny shrugged. “I mean, it’s insane, but so is most of your life. You need a full moon buddy? Someone to chain you to a radiator? You want me to research packs, or what?”

Scarlett stared at her, something in her chest unraveling. “You believe me.”

“I believe you believe it. And honestly? I’ve seen weirder. Like the time you made a squirrel sit on your shoulder for an hour.”

Scarlett laughed, the sound startled and wet. “That’s not—”

Penny grinned. “You’re my best friend, Sinclair. If you say you’re turning into a wolf, I’ll buy you a collar and a chew toy. But mostly, I’ll just be here.”

Scarlett wiped her eyes, feeling the tremble ease out of her body. “Thank you.”

Penny waved it off. “You’d do the same for me. Well, maybe not the collar part.”

Scarlett’s face split into a real, unguarded smile. “Not unless you paid me.”

“b***h, I’d pay you double.”

They doubled over laughing, the tension breaking. For a moment, the city’s lights looked less like a threat and more like a map, every window a possible escape.

Scarlett leaned back, the tequila warm in her veins. “You know, you never did organize your spice rack.”

Penny lifted her glass. “I told you—I excavate.”

They clinked glasses. For the first time in days, the wolf inside Scarlett was silent, listening.

And for the first time in years, she didn’t feel alone.