Page 26 of Doubly Bound

Landry looked at his partner, and Callan shrugged. Neither one of them knew what to expect. Their sassy mate was staring at them like they were dolts, and he had no idea how to convince her except to show her. It was up to his partner, though, as the hotel room would not hold his Dragon.

The sounds of bones breaking, muscles tearing, and magic hummed in the air, but all of it was drowned out by Sage’s panicked scream. Landry’s Liger whimpered and chuffed. The animal was undoubtedly upset by his reception. She was their mate. Fear is one emotion that should never be present when she was with them.

Then again, the tiny, sweet smelling normal knew nothing of Shifters. Bloody hell. They’d fucked this all up. Sage ran to the adjoining bathroom and slammed the door, locking herself in. Followed by the sound of something breaking. Was that glass? Landry yowled and Callan glared at the Liger.

“Sage! Sage? Open the door, love. Are you hurt?”

“No, you jerks! I am not hurt. I am pissed off!” Sage opened the bathroom door and proceeded to throw several breakable objects at them both. Well, not everything broke, some things bounced. Looking down, he saw that one was a hairbrush. He really needed to do something to calm her down, but she had already slammed the door before he had a chance to speak.

“Sage, look, we already bit you and claimed you as ours. We have to talk to get through this,” he said through the door.

Callan could easily rip the door from off its hinges, but he had no desire to scare her further. His Dragon was angry as fuck that he’d upset their wee mate. He glared at Landry. They needed to be in human form to deal with the situation. Faster than ever, the blond was back on two feet beside him.

“Sage, please, this isn’t how it was supposed to happen. We thought you knew,” he started.

“Knew? How could I know? Who in their right mind knows about these things?” Sage raged.

Good.

Progress, right?

At least when she was pissed, she wasn’t scared of them. He couldn’t stand the idea of their fierce and sassy little mate being afraid of either of them.

“How did this happen?” she asked in a small voice that struck a chord inside his heart.

“Sweetheart, we are not bad guys. In fact, we are responsible for a bunch of Alpha Omega pairs like us, searching for their mates. We hired a Witch Coven to speed up the process. They were supposed to bring potential mates here to meet with pairs, and—”

“OMG! It’s like a supernatural escort service! You guys are pimps?”

“What? No! Hell no! Sage, please try to understand, this is not a hookup. We are mates,” Landry pleaded.

“I’ll wring that Witch’s neck! Burn the whole bloody Coven!” Callan’s beast was seething, scratching at him from the inside out. He felt his Dragon’s fire boiling in his gut. Pure rage bubbling over. His mate had been lied to. She hadn’t known a fucking thing about them.

“Please, Sage,” Landry’s voice was raspy, thick with his Liger. “We can work this out. We are your mates—”

“You arrogant, overbearing asshats! What the fuck were you thinking keeping this from me?”

“Sage! Let us explain.”

“Fuck you!” She howled behind the closed door.

“Wait! Please—”

The sound of someone entering the suite had both he and his partner snarling. They wanted her out of the bathroom with them, where they could easily protect her from whoever dared intrude.

Sniff.

Wait.

He recognized the scent of the males who’d entered. Yes, the two males were under his purview. A Triad pair, but another accompanied them as well.

Sniff.

And she was theirs. Newly mated, her scent still held a note of familiarity, a small resemblance to his mate’s.

Oh fuck.

Relatives, he snarled.

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