I crawl to my knees, pushing Karl's protective body off of mine and survey the devastation in front of us.
"Well, that's one way to deal with an entrenched enemy" I mutter under my breath, drawing a low chuckle from my rather disheveled and scorched partner.
"All's well that ends well, now let's go grab the ..." Karl's sentence abruptly ends there as he turns and sees the mangled remains of our ride.
"Guess I overdid that one a little bit"
Little bit? The truck was a hundred yards from the camp walls! There's stakes the size of fence posts through the grill and windshield even at that range, if Karl hadn't pulled us into the ditch and put up a shield I'm not certain we'd have even survived this little bit of overdid it.
I was just about to verbally flay him bare when his hand landed on my head, softly stroking my ears.
"Don't get so stressed Little Lycan, it's bad for your heart health".
I growled at him before the magnitude of his actions dawned on me. My ears, he stroked my ears! I am still in my partial, defective Lycan form and now he's seen it. I turn to take a step away to gather my thoughts and my tail flicks him in the face.
"The ears were good, but this softness is amazing. Why don't you stay like this all the time?"
He's got to be making fun of me, there's no way he's not embarrassed to be seen with a defective Lycan. How am I going to make him keep this to himself? My thoughts are racing, trying to find a solution until I feel a hand again patting my head.
"Seriously, relax. Your Alpha told me all about your hangups about your Lycan form, and I'm not going to judge you for it" I relax a little at his words.
"I just wish he'd told me you were this adorable, I'd have found a reason for you to shift every single day" Karl whispered to himself, setting out the maps and his remaining gear, taking inventory before we moved on to the portal, the next step in our mission.
My face flushed red at the thought of being called adorable by Karl. I'm glad he's not looking down on me, and he treated me as an equal teammate, even knowing in advance that my shift wasn't all that it was supposed to be.
Taking out my kit I started checking everything over as Karl darted over to the truck and returned with the rest of the stored gear and camping supplies.
"Well, looks like we're still in good shape, though unfortunately we're walking" he told me without even the good grace to look ashamed of himself for destroying our ride. "Take 30 minutes to rest up and eat and we'll move forwards into the portal. Don't worry about discarded magazines and such, the safe house will send a cleanup crew here to keep prying eyes away and tidy up."
Karl handed me what looked like a takeaway box and a fork before setting about restocking his bags of ammunition. Inside was breakfast. Definitely breakfast, with a pancake on the bottom, scrambled eggs, sausages, bacon, toast, jelly and a cup of oatmeal.
"Breakfast?"
"Yeah, I've never figured out what is supposed to go into a lunch. So, given the option of breakfast or dinner meals, I packed twice as many breakfasts"
The logic of his reply left me totally baffled. I mean, I suppose it makes sense, but lunch has foods of its own doesn't it? The pack serves sandwiches and fruit, a light meal to bridge the gap. But as hungry as I am after all that exertion, a few sandwiches would hardly suffice.
Still stuck in my thoughts, lunchbox now empty, I'm taken by surprise when Karl suddenly stands up and starts slinging his gear.
"Time's up, grab your kit and let's get through that portal"
So we were informed, you never know what you'll find across a portal. It could be as small as a cavern system or a castle, just an isloated area. Or it could be the gate to a whole other world, I've heard some were even friendly and their portals were guarded to remain open and trade with the nations in which they formed. Though that was a rarity, most were like this one, full of hostile forces. Only one had an advanced technological species on it so far, looking very much human. They'd warned the Russians who arrived to investigate that the portals were bad news, to close them where they could and guard their world against the formation of more, before deploying some sort of device that slammed the portal shut in their faces.
Gathering my gear and my wits and my gear, I finally remembered about the tail swishing behind me and started to shift back.
"Not yet" Karl interrupted me "We don't know what we'll be facing, so being at 100 percent combat capability is the best course of action"
Unable to counter that logic, my Lycan form being significantly stronger and faster after all, I simply finished my preparations and tried my best to ignore Karl's pleased expression.