"Interesting to hear from a werewolf. Aren't all you dogs about pissing all over your territory? Marking it?"
He couldn't argue with that, so he shrugged.
Tirigan leaned ever closer. "Not even a taste to earn my goodwill? No? Surely you see where this going? Give me a taste, or I'll take it all."
"You'll do what you want whether I give you my blood or not. I'll earn more of your goodwill by standing my ground."
"You think so?" Tirigan eyed him hard and the lightning cracked overhead. "You may be right about that." A purple light emanated from the alleyway and it drew his attention, his eyes darting toward it. "It seems our hunters aren't just here for you. It seems they're here for me, too." He laughed, and the sound was just as horrible as the first time Parker heard it.
"Peter Breslin might be worth your attention," Parker offered.
"The hunter? Bah."
"He's been Changed and infected. He's unkillable. Immune to silver."
"That would help you, wouldn't it, if I took care of that for you?” He seemed to pause to consider. “What will you do for me?"
The purple light grew in intensity. "Anything but what you really want, I suppose."
Tirigan eyed him. "It seems we're at an impasse, doesn't it? I want my daughter."
"Have you tried asking her? Have you tried accepting her for who she is?"
Tirigan roared, the sound as loud as any bellow of a werewolf. "She has not accepted who she is."
Parker maintained his cool. "You're right about that."
"Excuse me, what?"
"I said you're right. But it's not for either of us to tell her who she is. It's for her to tell us."
"I'd planned to gut you, boy. To wear your entrails around my neck and your head mounted on the hood of my Bentley." He let the statement hang without further explanation.
"I suppose you could try. You'd likely succeed, but what does that have to do with anything?" Parker saw no point in lying about the odds. They both knew what they were.
"I enjoy you, for the moment. Just when I think there is nothing new under this sun, or moon, as the case happens to be, then I meet you.”
Parker wasn't sure how to respond to that, so he didn't.
"I'll have my child back."
"She's not a child. Hasn't been for a long time." Except, even as Parker said the words, he knew they weren't completely true. There was still something very innocent about Belle. It wasn't just that she didn't know how the supe world worked. There was a sweetness about her that needed protecting.
"You see it, don't you?" Tirigan asked softly.
"Here's what I don't understand. If you want to protect her, how does forcing her to be something she's not save that innocence?"
"It doesn't. That's the point, wolf. I need to make her strong. So she can not only survive the horrors of this world, but thrive."
"Why can't she do it in her own way?"
Tirigan cocked his head to the side. "But she isn't, is she? She's running."
"Yeah, I'd run if I were her, too." He thought about what Blake would do if he stopped eating meat and stopped Turning. It wouldn't be anything like Tirigan.
"I don't think you would."
He wasn't going to argue about it. Instead, he said, "If all you want is what's best for Belle, then why did you slaughter everyone at The Greasy Lamb?"
"Hunters. These same hunters in the alleyway who are coming for us both. They'd been watching her. Did she really think after all these years, I didn't know where she was? Me? I've always known and I let her run, but now it's time to come home. It's time to let me make her strong."
He could see the wisdom in Tirigan's words. He understood the bonds of family, but he also knew that Belle was terrified of him and that this was her choice.
"Do you have proof I can show her about The Lamb?"
Tirigan narrowed his eyes. "Have I swayed you, then, without blood?"
"It's not for me to be swayed. I keep telling you that."
"Bah, you Betas are the worst. An Alpha would say yea or nay and be done."
He shook his head. "No, Blake would tell you the same thing. As would his Beta. I'm neither, so I suppose I am the very worst."
Tirigan snorted. "She's the future leader of the Asakku murder, and she married a puppy." Tirigan rolled his eyes. "Literally."
"It is what it is. Now, about that proof... if you want Belle to speak with you, that would go a long way toward it."
"A dog with a bone." He shook his head.
Parker laughed. "Okay, that was funny." Of course, if Tirigan knew to which bone Parker was referring, that might not go over so well, considering it was in reference to his daughter.