"How are you feeling?" Andrew asked with clear concern.
"I feel fine alpha," James replied, enjoying the feeling of normality that came from everyone. None of these people saw him as a monster or a freak. They saw him as one of their own. Sandy waved off everyone demanding they give him some room. She guided him with surprising force to an empty chair and placed an overflowing plate of food in front of him. He should have more near death experiences; he thought as he rubbed his hands together with eager anticipation. He didn't know if he was going to be able to eat it all, but he was certainly going to try.
"Mom, want me to wake Lily for breakfast?" Lacy asked, and Sandy's cheerful face darkened.
"No let her sleep, she was up nearly the whole night," her mother told her.
"Something wrong with the hu-Lily?" He asked not liking the sudden worry everyone seemed to have. Sandy gave him a smile that seemed more forced than authentic.
"Nothing to worry about, she just came down with a cold. The fever doesn't let her get too much sleep," she told him.
"It's her fault; she works too much," Tony added with a look of disapproval that James noticed made him look a lot like his father.
"As long as it's a cold and nothing more," Andrew stated darkly, and everyone fell silent.
After everyone had eaten breakfast, Andrew announced they were going out to search for Greg. "I want to come along," James told him after swallowing the last bit of food on his plate. He was much hungrier than he had originally thought.
"Are you sure you're up for it," the alpha asked.
"Of course I feel as good as new," he replied getting up and putting his plate in the sink.
"Great, because honestly we could use your help, we keep losing the trail of his scent somewhere between here and her apartment." James nodded and thanked Sandy for breakfast before following the others out of the house. In the yard stood a group of twenty werewolves, some he knew, some he thought he knew, and others he had never seen before.
Andrew organized them into ten groups of two and gave each of them instructions on where to search. He walked up to James after they had entered the forest. "James you are better with trails than us, I need you to follow Greg's scent and see if you can track it further than my trackers have been able to, they always lose the trail at the same spot."
James nodded in agreement and sniffed the air; even though it was a few days old, he quickly caught what he believed to be Greg's scent. He followed the scent slowly so he wouldn't miss a single detail. The trail went relatively straight, but he wondered why Greg had cut through the forest to go to Lily's apartment when the roads were much more direct and easier. When he was about halfway to her apartment, the scent just ended. This must have been the spot where the trackers lost the scent; he thought and retraced his steps until he found it again.
He circled the area and managed to pick up something the other's had missed, the very faint scent of the werewolf who pretended to be Greg. It crossed right in Greg's path just before it ended. While he couldn't determine if they had passed at the same time or not, he was sure it was proof that this psychopath had kidnapped, attacked, or maybe even killed Greg. James continued to search the area for any signs of Greg or the blonde that pretended to be him.
There were signs of a struggle but nothing that indicated what happen to Greg, no blood or trail of any kind. He moved some of the dead leaves, looking for any hint, but his hand only landed in sticky sap, probably from one of the trees. He swore, wiping his hand off on his jeans, frustrated with the realization that there was nothing left to find.
He returned to the alpha's, house keeping his eyes and nose alert for anything that he might have missed the first time. The alpha looked hopeful when he returned, but James shook his head side to side.
"Nothing?" Andrew asked, the disappointment clear in his voice.
"I wasn't able to find Greg, but I did find something. The imposter crossed paths with Greg. I can't tell if it was at the same time or not, but I am pretty sure it means that they got him," James explained.
"They took Greg but why? Greg isn't strong; he doesn't have a high position and what could they possibly want from him?" Andrew asked echoing James own doubts.
"What worries me more is why they removed the real Greg to put someone else in his place at Lily's house. When the psycho called me the day of the break-in he sounded as if he hated her and wanted her out of the way, so why send someone over to her house..."
"And do nothing," Andrew finished his thought, and James nodded. "If he didn't harm her then that means he has some other interest in her but what could he possibly want?"
"Maybe we are overthinking things; he probably knows we are after him. Tony lives here and Lacy spends most of her time here too, Lily is the only one who isn't always here. That could be the reason this lunatic did this stunt with Greg, to try to prove something and it's not actually about her at all," James explained. Andrew clapped a hand on his shoulder after a moment of silence.
"You're probably right James, either way that doesn't bring us any closer to Greg," the alpha stated.
"Did you track the werewolf after I was in the net?" he asked. Andrew sat down on the picnic table, looking exhausted, and shook his head side to side.
"Only a little bit, but at the time I was too worried about getting that horrible thing off of you," he admitted.
"Well, I think I'll see if I can't pick up something from there. No point for me to just sit here without doing anything," James told the alpha. Andrew replied with a simple nod and James turned and walked back into the forest. There had to be something they were missing, he was sure of it, he just needed to look harder.