Nature Red in Tooth and Claw

 "We're badly inbred, Mother," is what Tom distinctly did not say when she advised him not for the first time of his pureblooded status. What did it mean? A sense of the historic and aristocratic?  Or Dad drinking himself blind to shrive his head of the ghosts of the Last War and promise one of his sons for the next? 

Or to let him know he had an appointment with Uncle Bill, late of the Second Crimea? 

He knew he had a family responsibility--Defender of the Family, it was called. It was also a duty to God and Country, and that was fine, for what it was. It also sounded a lot to him like they were about to make him a near-immortal to possibly lose limbs and sanity for the cause of something he didn't entirely understand, the free lands, and the right of wolven to roam them. 

He didn't have a lot of love for his near-kindred. They were unruly. The lot of them. The women were appalling, and the men were louts. 

But the stupid fucking thing of it was, he'd ultimately fight for any of them to be their fucking loutishness against some bugger who wouldn't let them. So, Uncle Billy's bite it was. 

Uncle Billy had been through his wars. His brain was roaming, he was all grey hair and teeth and rambling thoughts. He'd visited him with the family and saw the man winding down. He never knew him at his best, but knew from rumors his best was spent over three hundred years of valorous service. And not all or maybe any of it would ever slip into history books because their kind were
"un"known as a government secret. And their kind hid in the pages of history, and they were proud to do it, anyway. 

And at age 25 he took the blood ritual and accepted every mark and day-notices of the whole medieval affair because h could read the papers and realized what there was something he had to fight for, more than just his family but also and especially for them. 

There was something out there that did not want strange folk. And strange folk was ultimately, how he knew himself and the others to be. And they needed fighters. 

He was tall and strong and full of that dog. He chose to fight.