Blayde

We all jumped to our feet and turned around to see a tall brown hair vampire standing in the hallway, his eyes and smile dripping with malice. He walked towards us with the confidence of a complete fool as his eyes scanned up and down Liam's body, lingering on his neck and chest.

"Why hello darling, I've come back to take you home, to your nest where you belong"

"The fuck are you talking about?" I growled, Eli growling as well alongside me whilst Liam sat there with a clear amount of panic and shock in his blue eyes.

"Oh my dear hasn't told you yet, we're mates, and I am his sire as well. I've come back to take him to where he belongs, and I bought some... insurance with me" with those final words, I noticed council guards entering the house through windows and the back doorway, coming to surround us all, their guns once again aiming for us.

"You better tell me what the fuck is going on because I've had enough of this shit" Eli snarled, making the men's weapons all jerk towards him when he took a threatening step forward.

"You see, according to council law, a sire has rights to his vampires especially when they are mates, and because I am both his sire, and soon to be mate, you are currently stealing from me" He grinned, his face mimicking that of the grin who stole Christmas as his eyes danced with suppressed anger and rage.

"I'm so sick and tired of you shit Archer, back the fuck off, or I'll slice you into pieces... After all, you wouldn't want to end up like poor ole Peter now would you?" Liam shocked both of us with his suddenly deep and deadly tone that held so much hate and rage, that even my wolf coward at the sound of it.

The man, Archer, didn't appear shaken though, in fact, he looked almost pleased as Liam took a step towards him. But my hand flashed out to pull him to me when I realized what Archer wanted.

He was trying to provoke Liam into attacking him so that he would be labeled as feral, and captured by the council, and would most likely have the previous murders blamed on him. And because we were protecting him, we would be arrested and put on trial for being accessories to his crimes.

The motherfucker was trying to get the council to turn on us.

As if hearing my thoughts, Eli's eyes met mind over Liam's head, the look of determination and anger alerting me to the fact that he too understood what Archer was trying to accomplish.

"Oh, you don't really want to do that my little mate, after all, you weren't saying that the night I turned you into my kind. If I recall accurately, you were begging for it" cockiness and venom oozed from his voice as he stepped on the couch and closer to Liam.

I tugged him away, pressing him against the front of my body and wrapping one arm around his chest and the other around his waist. He didn't struggle, but he did make it clear that he didn't like being held back at a time like this by the way his muscles tensed.

"I'm Not Your Mate" he bit out, each word-final and deathly serious as he stared down Archer, not a speck of fear present within him.

"Sir, If your mate refuses the bond, we cannot lawfully remove him from these two men and give him over to you, even if you are his sire" one of the soldiers spoke, making some of the men lower their weapons slightly as they regarded all of us with cautious expressions.

"He's not refusing the bond, can't you see, these men are holding him against his will, and I demand that you have them arrested and my mate returned to me this instant" he almost yelled before regaining his composure and turning back to us, his eyes almost completely black, with a crimson tint. He was close to losing it, and we all knew it.

After all, he lost his true mate, and cannot have Liam as a substitute as he had originally planned. A few better thought out moves could expose his off-balance nature once and for all.

"You're going to hand over my mate and never pursue us again, or these fine gentlemen will have to pump both your asses full of silver bullets, so, what will it be?"

"Neither" I growled before biting down on the side of Liam's neck, marking him right in front of all of them. You see, when someone truly hates despises or does not in any way shape or form accept the bond, their mate cannot create a true mate mark unless their mate accepted the bond on some level. But doing this shows that not only am I his mate, but he accepts the mating, and because of that, Archer has no right to have him.

I pulled back just in time to see Archer attempt to lung at us, trying to attack us with his sharpened fingernails and fangs. I quickly pushed Liam behind me, before shifting halfway in order to deal with the threat present before me, but he never even made as far as to scratch me. His body instead jerked and feel to the ground at the impact of multiple silver bullets piercing his abdomen, chest, and head.

His now lifeless corpse fell to the floor, blood like a red ocean, pooled around him as his red eyes stare unseeingly up at us. I breathed deeply, allowing my body to relax and shift back into my human for before turning back to Liam and Eli.

"Leave" Eli commanded, his voice deceptively calm, yet not one person questioned him before scrabbling out of the house, they all knew very well what type of damage a full-grown dragon shifter could cause if provoked.

Liam turned to Eli, his eyebrows furrowing as he noticed the gray scales that began to climb from the collar of his shirt, up his neck, and to his jawline.

"Eli?" he asked gently as he raised a hand to touch his scales, making Eli's shimmering grey eyes bore into him as his dragon attempted to force a shift. My wolf was doing the same, although he wasn't riding me as hard as Eli's dragon was riding him. Eli suddenly yanked Liam up into his arms and gave me a look that said to follow him as he strode down the hallway, his fast stride hinting at what he was going to do.

"But what about the-"

"We'll deal with that later, right now, we have much more pressing matters to attend to" Eli cut him off mid-sentence, his voice making me shiver at how deep and gravely it was.

"What matters?" Liam asked, still confused, but it all became clear when Eli tossed him onto the bed of the master bedroom.

"Well for starters, we're going to take you until you can't walk, and then we're going to go beat the shit out o the council, members who dared to participate in having you taken away from us" he explained as he yanked off his shirt and began unbuckling his belt.

"But mostly fuck you until you can't walk" I added.