personally i would not take the situation with the big mouths personally, what i would do here with 26,000 is check the big blind, you have plenty of time left. anything from 10s above here id pop to about 6K to defend my blind,,, and below are good to see a flop with for free, if you hit your set, you are well disguised and likely to get action and payed off.

If big cards come on the flop you know  you can escape without having already commited extra unnecessary chips to the pot

you made a standard play which was good, you played the hand correctly, against a short stack you are very unlucky to ru in set over set,,, don't feel bad you played it correctly, folding here would have been a silly move, especially as he could eaily havehad AK or AA