Stepping out of the portal, Rusty found himself back in the same room with Chad waiting for him in his slightly different human form while sitting with his legs crossed on the hard and polished wooden floor. Seeing Rusty come out of the portal, Chad's eyes widened, he jumped to his human feet and his heart fluttered with joy from his alpha's return. Knowing that everything seemed as it should have been, Rusty transformed quickly into his human form as if he were just shedding his coat after returning home. As Rusty walked up to Chad while still wearing the tattered clothing, standing chest to chest, Rusty admired his own new and now permanently manly body.
When Rusty stood chest to chest with Chad, Chad wrapped his huge arms around Rusty and hugged him tightly. With this unexpected showing of affection, Rusty returned the hug haphazardly with a slight amount of hesitation. Before the hug broke, they both patted each other on the back, which was a typical male bonding thing. When the hug broke, Rusty and Chad stepped back a couple steps each.
"Hey... I am glad to see you too!"
"Oh Rusty... I am so glad that you are back!"
Rusty's eyebrows furled quizzically. "Why... how long has it been?"
A bit shocked by his response, Andrew's eyes almost bulged right out of his head. "Rusty... you have no idea how long it has been???"
A bit confused, Rusty shook his head slightly from side to side. "No, I have no clue. I stepped into the portal, I did what I was supposed to, the portal reopened and I came back just like I left. Well... when I left, you weren't in your human form and we had just won this place for ourselves."
"Well... the first thing that you should know then, it has been fifteen years since you first stepped through. Secondly, when you left, the portal... apparently... imbued me with it's energy and left as soon as you came back."
"Really... how was that for you?"
"Well... to be honest... fifteen years with that type of power is a lot of responsibility. Also, it is a lot of time for the men to be waiting for something to do, so I used the magic from the portal to help keep them busy."
"If I may ask, what did you do?"
"Of course you can ask... you are the Alpha! I first explored the estate and found that there was a basement level under both of the wings. Under the men's wing, I found a secret entrance that led down to the basement, which had been turned into a lab. Apparently, there was some gene therapy research going on to turn humans into werewolves, like us. It turns out that they were really close, but it appears that who ever had been working on this just couldn't find how to have the double helix DNA sequencing accept the third string, which is found in our DNA in human or wolf forms. In the old women's wing, well... it was a completely empty and unfinished concrete room with all the venting and plumbing exposed. I used the magic of the portal to turn half of it into a hunting room and the other half into a game-room/movie theater."
"Ok... so where are we with the DNA sequencing? Also, you mentioned a hunting room... what did you mean and what kind of game did you have to hunt?"
"Well... with the genetic manipulation, I have worked on it every year except for at this time every day when I came back here, hoping you would return to hear about all that has been done in the name of our kind. Until within the last couple of days, there had been no breakthrough, even with trying to bind human and wolf DNA together with the portal's magic. Frustrated, I tried the last thing that I could think of, but that actually worked. I turned into my anthro form and used my claws to cut into my flesh and allowed the blood to pool into a petri dish before the laceration closed up as quickly as I thought it would. I then changed back, took a drop of my blood and mixed it with the formula already synthesized that was left in a freezer. Remarkably, they bonded almost immediately. With this formula, we could introduce it into the outside environment in a myriad of ways. The thing is, it is untested on both sexes because I wanted to wait for what you had to say about using it on a mass scale. With the hunting room, I used the magic to generate a 'holodeck' just like in Star Trek: The Next Generation or the 'Danger Room' in X-Men so there are no actual deaths because I was not sure how you would feel about that either."
"Wow... that was pretty long winded, but also necessary. So... do the others know about the lab?"
"No, they have no idea. It has just been me since I was required to have degrees in chemistry, anatomy, and biology for the original masseuse company that I worked for. They required a personal trainer's degree so I'd understand what medications they used and their reaction, especially when it came to their muscles. That is why I have all the other degrees to just get the personal trainer deal. Obviously, the masseuse degree was just for the basics, so I could have my license and do the job at other parlours that didn't require all the other mentioned degrees. So what I ended up doing when I discovered this lab, I read everything that I could on the internet and even ordered books delivered on gene manipulation and gene therapy all the way down to the basic but troubling DNA sequences."
While the two had talked, they moved into the men's wing into Chad's original room, which confused Rusty in the first place.
"So, what are we doing in your room Chad?"
"Well... I never noticed that the back wall in my closet was inset just slightly. With my newer heightened vision, I noticed it almost right away. Then I pushed on the wall, it unlatched and slid into the rest of the wall revealing a four person elevator which lowered into the laboratory. So... would you care to see it? We could start testing on two subjects, one male and the other female to see what happens. You and I could hunt for a pair that we would agree that would benefit the pack, while the others just go about their business as they have since you left and I found this place. I know they would like to go hunting for real game, other than the occasional family of deer we let wander onto the property, but I am not sure if we should unleash our kind upon the unsuspecting humans until we are completely ready to make our move."
"I agree with you Chad! Let's see how well our werewolf serum works before we make the humans aware of our existence. Humans, as we both know, fear what they don't know. Just like with Marcia, we had to make sure there was a large number of us before we could tackle such a huge undertaking. You saw how swiftly things went from planning and waiting, the same will be when we move into the rest of the world. First, why don't you show me that lab of yours!"