Stupid. [ He mutters between sobs. It's fine! He'll be fine after he lets it out. ] You can't hurt yourself for me, I'm supposed to take care of you.

[ But he's hugging back tightly and crying while everything comes back to him. He'd known vampires were real—werewolves were, so why not? But if he had to stay by his brother's side, it would have been nice to do it some way that didn't involve dying.

So he shakes and cries and holds Ezra close. With his new senses he can smell him to an almost ridiculous degree, feel and hear his heartbeat in his chest with startling clarity. He needs to memorize him again—this part of himself that's both inside and outside of him. At least doing that helps calm him down. It only takes a few more minutes for him to come back to himself and consider that there's actually a future after this. Being a vampire doesn't mean he's dead. ]

I'm... I'm not sure how I did that, for the record. Much as I'd like to take credit for it, aren't freshly-turned vampires usually just thralls?

[ He's still Elijah Kamski, he covered all his bases when he did his research. ]