The Vampire Diaries: The Salvation: Unseen Read Online Free PDF

shoes, she curled her feet under her and sipped her tea, grimacing at the bitter, acidic taste of vervain. The mix of herbs Bonnie concocted for her friends was heavy on the vervain—which protected the drinker from being compelled—but the first taste was always unpleasant.
    “More honey?” Alaric asked, but Meredith shook her head.
    “I want to taste all of it,” she said, and tried another sip, concentrating. The second time, it wasn’t quite so bad. Underneath the bitterness of the vervain was the faint sweetness of lavender and a rich touch of cinnamon.
    “I don’t know why you won’t just sweeten it up,” Alaric said, shifting so that he could dig his thumbs into her vertebrae, kneading her shoulders with his fingers. “That’s nasty stuff.”
    “I want to taste it all,” Meredith repeated sleepily. It had been a long day, several long days, and she was ready to spoon up against Alaric in their wide, soft bed and go to sleep.
Work
, she reminded herself.
You’re going to win this trial.
    Alaric worked a knot out of her shoulders, and Meredith moaned in pleasure. “You have no idea how tight my back got while we were gone,” she told him.
    “Oh, Stefan doesn’t do this?” Alaric said teasingly. “Thank God, I was wondering what I had to offer that your hunting partner couldn’t.”
    “Trust me, you’ve got lots to offer,” Meredith said with a smile. Alaric brushed her hair aside and focused on the massage while she looked happily around the room. Her law books sat on the shelf, her slim silver computer on the desk next to a stack of Alaric’s old manuscripts. Her hunting stave, in its case, was tucked in the corner. On the side table were various pictures of their friends, their wedding.
    And a picture of Meredith, ten years younger, her arms around her twin brother, Cristian, both of them grinning. She didn’t really remember Cristian—this reality where they’d grown up together was one the Guardians had created—and she didn’t like to think about his death. Becoming a vampire was one of the worst fates she could imagine for a hunter.
    Half-consciously, she leaned back against Alaric’s hands, and he kneaded her muscles harder, comforting. Lately, she’d been coming to terms with the idea of Cristian. He’d grown up part of her family, in this life, and he mattered, whether Meredith remembered the young boy in the picture or not.
    All the elements that made up her life—hunting, school, becoming a lawyer, her friends, her family, Alaric—they all mattered. She’d been so used to thinking of hunting as what defined her—that everything else was a gloss over her secret life, part of her disguise. That all she truly was, was a hunter.
    But Meredith was going to be a
lawyer
now. She was somebody’s
wife.
She was a friend and a daughter, and once she’d been a sister. These things were real to her, and they all mattered. Just like Bonnie’s vervain tea, the bitter and sweet and spicy all mixing together, making up a whole.
    “I want to taste it all,” she murmured a third time, sleepily, and Alaric snorted with laughter.
    “You’re just about talking in your sleep,” he said. “Time for bed. Everything will still be there in the morning.” He swung her up into his arms, and she buried her face in the crook of his neck, giggling sleepily, as he carried her to bed.

    It was a beautiful night. Stefan opened his senses to everything around him, unusually eager to drink it all in. He could smell magnolia flowers in the yard of a house a few blocks away, the spices and grease of three different restaurants on the street he and Elena were walking up, the sour scent of beer coming from a bar halfway down the street, the warring perfumes of three girls getting out of a car near the curb. He could hear a hundred conversations, from the drunken argument of four frat boys in the bar to the loving whispers of a newly engaged couple in the Indian restaurant. In the apartment over a