Nature Red in Tooth and Claw 3

 Except that wasn't what any of it felt like. You can be fully apprised from other people's accounting that war is something like dreary waiting for something to happen punctuated by moments of sheer terror, but he at least imagined things to be more--

Physical. 

It wasn't that he was the sort of perfect idiot who expected desperate charges at the enemy in dug in positions with fixed bayonets in a do-or-die rush, but the special branch that recruited him (based on a compact going back to her Majesty Gloriana, thank you very much) didn't actually care for "his kind" on the battlefield. Apparently, they wanted something a bit more disciplined than a big hairy berserker out there. 

They had him sink his teeth into morse code, telegraph and telephonic intercepts instead. Something to do with the rumored sensitivity of their ears. Heightened instinct for danger. It was definitely nothing like Boy's Adventure series. It took a lot more of his mental fortitude to see the big picture of war emerging he thought, than just shoving his bulk man to man against the enemy.

It was sparing what he hoped would be his very long life, too. 

Meeting people outside of the village--that was another thing. They were the same and different, and he saw his folks back home differently. They weren't worse than anyone else. They were a just a little more untouched by modernity than most. 

He was a little startled to meet others were from outside of his home. They were both everywhere--and sparse. He wasn't sure what accounted for that but had ideas. 

It wasn't until after the Yanks came in that they even trusted him with working human sources, but he had two enormous gifts dealing with people--he could be threatening just by existing, or even seductive when he put his mind to it. So when it came to...

[REDACTED]

It was more or less what he should have expected, many lives lost on paper, with all too many for his liking happening in real life. But in general, it was interrogation, figuring out who to lean on, who to beguile. Of course, there were dustups but that was a sign things had gone pear-shaped and he tried to see to it they never did.

There was, he learned, a kind of social camouflage he needed if he was going to survive a good long while. His nature, expected to be red in tooth and claw, had to be stiff upper lip over his fangs and claws nicely manicured.  It was a game, and he figured it out well enough to hang on in the special service. 

If were was not much like the folklore about being were (he never changed all the way into a bloody animal for one thing, which would be physically impossible, he just...uh, became something very dangerous when necessary) and war wasn't like his preconceptions of war, the spy game wasn't like James Bond, not that his Bureau tackled the same sort of villain. No high-class gambling parlors or races or fancy occasions to wear a tuxedo--he was more in line to seduce girls in some Eastern European steno pool for access to their bosses' security information. 

Although he did have some really close shaves in Romania...

[REDACTED] 

Whatever he thought about the myth of vampires, the Soviet hand was exceptionally harsh. To his understanding, most weres from most of Eastern Europe and all across Central Asia were in Siberia. Not by accident. The history of his kind that wouldn't ever be written down.

And of course he was never going to forget what happened in Antarctica, although he would try to never think about it in his waking hours (and what happened in his dreams generally had him waking up in a sweat, his sheets beribboned--the less he thought about THAT, the better). 

What was the quote? You never can go home again? He barely did. His father passed on. His mother went to live with his brother, and that part of the family managed to assimilate into a suburban respectability. And the the village he knew was very changed. Many went to London to blend in there and get work. And others went off to the States.  No one kept track in years who transformed and who didn't, who was bit and who wasn't or who married who. They all figured they would find a way to manage, and he couldn't fault them, so did he. 

The culture was degraded was all, and there wasn't much he could do about that. The Defender of the Family was just a relic he was a part of. And still. 

It hadn't left him. He was a bachelor (although by no means celibate) and held to the full moon fast. There just seemed to be things you didn't want to play with. He always worried he'd go off his head somehow, end up like Mad Bill. Who might even still be roaming the countryside. He gathered the important things from the old family estate and after a consult with his brother, they sold it. Neither of them saw a future in their past. 

At the start of 1970s, he started to feel fed up, himself. He knew a lot of were went to the States. The Weres of London weren't his sort of people at all, and the Bureau never did want to see past his bloodline. 

The Yanks had their various M programs for spooky folk and he hated communism as much as anyone. Maybe it was time to try something different but the same farther afield. Before too long, he found himself in Woolverton [REDACTED].

He already was a young old man. He wanted to make it the kind of thing his old village hadn't been, even when he was a boy. Just a place for were to be.