Chosen Bride of the Seven Dark Princes

Chapter 278 - The Gift

"A present? For me?" Candace gasped.

"It's an early wedding present from all seven of us." Slate smiled. "We would wait to gift you your wedding present on the day of the wedding, but you need this before then."

Candace's eyes widened. She reached out and pulled the bow off, unboxing the gift with eager hands.

There was a huge amount of tissue which she pulled off and left all over the floor around them. By the time she was able to remove every single piece of fluffy tissue out of the box, there was a mound of white tissues all around her and she was staring at an empty box.

Scratching her head, Candace began scrambling on the floor, feeling around the tissue mounds. Had she accidentally pulled it from the box and it was hidden somewhere within the tissues?

Slate sat there without saying a word, his face deadpan.

Lucas swallowed down his laughter and acted nonchalant and half-bored.

Dante narrowed his eyes as if he was staring down a business opponent, all the while trying not to laugh.

Byron put on his best diplomatic regal face.

The twins looked everywhere but at Candace.

The only one who could not hide his amusement was Leonardo, but Lucas slid in front of him, using his body to hide Leonardo from Candace's view.

She turned her face upward to look at them.

"Did I miss something? There's nothing in the box."

"Did you look a bit more carefully?" Dante suggested with tenderness.

Candace poked her head back into the box. Her eyes widened. There truly was something in the box!

It was a tiny envelope that was affixed to the bottom with some sticky tape.

Since the box was fairly large and she was fairly small, Candace had to double up her body in order to reach into the bottom of the box.

The men held their breaths and tried not to laugh as they looked on at their wife, or at least the little bit that they could see of her.

At that moment, the only part of her showing was her shapely buttocks sticking up into the air, stretching out the spandex rear part of her black warrior bodysuit.

The rest of her was inside the box as she reached for the envelope, pulling it out from the bottom.

Slate reached out to steady her hips so she wouldn't accidentally pitch forward into the box. He didn't waste the opportunity to gently stroke her bottom either.

"I got it!" Candace called out in a muffled tone as she pulled her head out from within the box. "It's some kind of envelope."

She stood there, looking at it with curious eyes.

"It says, To My Bride, from Your Loving Husbands: Dante, Byron, Lucas, Leonardo, Jason, Jared, and Slate."

Candace paused for a moment, her eyes misting.

They spent their days giving her everything she could ever want or need, and they felt they had to give her a present for her wedding too.

"Thank you." She took a deep breath and dashed a tear of joy from her eyes.

"Open it Love." Leonardo urged.

She nodded and tore the envelope apart.

Inside was a small square card. She pulled it out and looked at it.

"I'm not sure what this is." She wrinkled her brows. "It looks like some sort of designation point."

She stared at it for a few seconds more. "It looks like a set of spacetime coordinates."

She turned back to the brothers.

"Is there something there?"

Dante grinned and nodded.

He opened up a virtual monitor and scanned in the coordinates from the card.

In no time flat, the spacetime coordinates zoomed in on an object.

It was a ship!

"Oh wow!" Candace clapped her hands with excitement. "This looks similar to the Raptor 650!"

"No no no, Darling." Jason laughed. "This is the Candace 001. It has been completely redesigned by me and Jared, inside and out!"

Jared nodded. "That's right Love. When we were out delivering the Raptor 650 to Mother Gwen, we realized that you were so in love with the ship that we decided to gift you one."

"But we quickly realized that we couldn't provide everything you would need due to the scope and scale of this project," Jason gave a wry grin. "So we engaged all our brothers."

Slate raised a finger. "You will see that this is most definitely NOT a reclaimed warship. That's much easier to do and it was what I gave Mother. Yours has been custom built from the ground up."

Dante laughed. "It's a good thing Candace. You don't need all the ammunition storage tanks or military-style cubicles taking up valuable space for other more important things like a ball-room style dance floor or a huge heated swimming pool."

Lucas grinned. "You will find that the Candace 001 is almost like a traveling village, with actual people living on there. Entertainers, musicians, crafters, bakers, chefs, baristas—an entire tiny community. Their only job is to take care of US and any guests we bring onboard."

"There's even a small but very well-equipped hospital onboard. I have my best doctors stationed there." Leonardo added with pride. "Of course, while I am with you there, I will be your personal physician."

"We did this so that you could travel around and be with any of us, at any time you wished." Byron chimed in.

"I took care of all the traveling visas and entry permits and all the documents that a galactic Ambassador would need to travel around the galaxy. That means this ship can go just about anywhere, even into pirate territory." Byron smiled with pride.

Lucas hugged himself, unable to contain his excitement. "It wouldn't matter where in the galaxy we had to be at to do our work, you could always drop by any time in your ship and it would be our home for the duration!"

"And for security," Slate held up five fingers, "I have five small guard ships that will continually surround your cruise ship at all times. It has its own docking bay underneath the ship and refuels within the mother ship Candace 001."

Dante nodded. "They will be rotated between my fleet and Slate's so that you will always be safeguarded no matter where you are."

"We had to give this gift early for you because we wanted to take it out on its maiden voyage." Jason grinned.

"And what better way to do it than right now, while we are all here and need to get to Marakaran anyway.." Jared laughed.