The Snow Wolf's Mate

The Weight of Almost:

[POV: Aria]

Cole had once been my reason to keep breathing.

In the suffocating darkness of Midnight Crest, he was the only spark of light I could find. The only one who looked at me like I wasn’t invisible. Who spoke to me with kindness instead of mockery, who gave without asking anything in return.

I used to cling to those moments like lifelines. I remember them all. Too well.

The time I was locked in the cellar for “disobedience”—four days, no food, no water, no light. The stench of mold and rats made my skin crawl. They told me it was training. That if I wanted to learn to survive, I’d have to earn it.

I was thirteen.

Cole found me on the second night. I hadn’t called out—I didn’t have the strength. But somehow, he knew. He slipped through the shadows and left behind a pouch of water, a crust of bread wrapped in cloth, and a single whispered word through the crack in the door.

“Hold on,” he said. So I did. And again and again, he came back for me.

He brought me scraps of food. Bandaged my bruises when no one was watching. Sat by the forest pond when I needed somewhere to cry. He never said much—but he didn’t need to.

Just his presence… it was enough to make me feel like I wasn’t entirely alone.

When Dayana tied my hands behind my back, drugged me with spoiled port, and dumped me into the swamp like garbage, it was Cole who pulled me out. I was half-drowned, coughing up bile and mud, the laughter of my sister and her friends still ringing in my ears.

He didn’t say a word then either. Just wrapped his arms around me, dragged me from the muck, and carried me to safety.

No one else would’ve bothered. Everyone else thought I deserved it. But Cole—he looked at me like maybe, just maybe, I was worth saving.

So how could I not fall in love with him?

It wasn’t dramatic or sudden, the way the stories said it should be. There was no lightning strike, no moment of breathless revelation. Just a slow, quiet ache that grew every time he looked at me without disgust. Every time he offered kindness in a world built on cruelty.

I began to believe the Moon Goddess had sent him to me. That maybe, after everything I’d survived, I was finally being given something good. Something soft. Something mine.

I told myself it was fate. That no one else could understand me like he did. That our bond, however unspoken, was real.

But it was never real. Not to him. Not in the way it was to me.

And I keep wondering… Why?

Why had I ever believed that someone like Cole would choose someone like me?

Everyone had always seen Dayana as the perfect one. The golden girl. The ideal. The example every young she-wolf was told to emulate. She was the rising star of Midnight Crest, the future Luna, the flawless heir to our bloodline.

And I was the mistake that came with her. The shadow trailing behind her shine.

So what made me think I ever had a chance? Was it because Cole had been kind to me? Was that all it took—for me to confuse pity for love?

Maybe that’s what it really was. Guilt. Sympathy. A flicker of compassion for the way the rest of the pack treated me like I was nothing.

Maybe he only stepped in because no one else did. Because he couldn’t stomach watching me be hurt.

But you don’t fall in love with someone because you feel sorry for them. There is no real love in pity.

So was everything I believed between us just… a lie?

Every soft look. Every quiet moment shared by the pond. Every stolen kindness. Were they all just crumbs of comfort he threw me because he could?

Because he thought I needed saving?

I did. But not like that.

I wanted someone to see me—not someone to rescue me. I wanted someone to choose me. And I chose him.

With every part of me. With a heart that had been so empty, so scraped clean of hope, Cole was the one I gave what little I had left.

I loved him.

With a love that came from pain and survival and every quiet scrap of faith I still carried. He was my first light in a world that had only ever been dark.

But now he’s the shadow that follows me.

I can’t imagine loving anyone the way I loved Cole. Not after what he became to me. Not after he looked at me, saw me—truly saw me—and still turned away. Still chose her.

He wasn’t just another person who left me behind. He was the last thread holding together what little trust I had in anyone. And when he cut it… he cut everything.

I sit on the edge of the narrow bed in the cold room Hayden gave me, my callused fingers twisting together in my lap.

I’ve worked so hard to find a place here. To earn even a scrap of peace. A purpose. Something other than the empty ache I’ve carried for so long.

But some nights, like this one, I still feel like that same girl in the cellar—locked away, forgotten. Unwanted.

And I don’t know which is worse—that I miss Cole, or that I still want to believe he once truly saw me.

Even if it was never real. Even if it broke me.

I tell myself to forget. To let go of the sound of his voice, the weight of his arms, the flicker of warmth I once felt whenever he was near. But no matter how hard I try, I can’t scrub the memories out.

Because for a time, Cole was the only reason I believed I was worth saving.

And now… I have to learn how to save myself.