“She was with her flying companion-her playmate. The one who was sacred to her, who was the other half of the mysteries of life for her. The one who would always be there for her, helping her, watching her back, picking her up when she fell down, listening to her stories-no matter how many times she told them. Loving her even when she was stupid. Understanding her without words. Being inside the innermost circle in her mind.Her soulmate.”

“Our minds work alike, she thought. She had found her partner, her equal, the one to work and live and love with her. Her soulmate.”

“To touch him in ways he'd never been touched before, this person who, beyond all logic, was the other half of her. Who belonged to her. Who was her soulmate.”

“Something was shining on Damon's face. She reached toward it, touched it, and lifted her fingers away in wonder."Don't be sad," she told him, feeling the cool wetness on her fingertips. But a pang of worry disturbed her. Who was there to understand Damon now? Who would be there to push him, to try to see what was really inside him? "You have to take care of each other," she said, realizing it. A little strength came back to her, like a candle flaring in the wind. "Stefan, will you promise? Promise to take care of each other?”

“She couldn't help thinking, even now about how handsome Damon looked, how wild and dark and ferocious and gorgeous. She could help thinking about the times he'd smiled at her, laughed at her, come to save her at her urgent call. She had honestly thought that someday... But now she felt as if her heart were breaking in two.”

“When she got control of herself a few minutes later, she realized that in his arms she felt almost what she had in her dream, that inexpressible sense of peace and security. Of belonging, utterly.As long as her soulmate was alive, and they were together, she would be all right.”

“But then she remembered something else, just a flash: looking up at Damon’s face in the woods and feeling such—such excitement, such affinity with him. As if he understood the flame that burned inside her as nobody else ever could. As if together they could do anything they liked, conquer the world or destroy it; as if they were better than anyone else who had ever lived.I was out of my mind, irrational, she told herself, but that little flash of memory wouldn’t go away.And then she remembered something else: how Damon had acted later that night, how he’d kept her safe, even been gentle with her.Stefan was looking at her, and his expression had changed from belligerence to bitter anger and fear. Part of her wanted to reassure him completely, to throw her arms around him and tell him that she was his and always would be and that nothing else mattered. Not the town, not Damon, not anything.But she wasn’t doing it.”