Page 87 of Knot Their Princess

“Should we order in?” Cade asks, putting his arm around my shoulders and kissing my temple.

“Yes, please.”

“What the lady wants, she gets,” Garen sings, heading for the drawer in the kitchen where we keep the stack of menus.

“Does anyone have anything against Chinese takeout? I’m craving lo mein.” Ilya unbuttons his collar.

“That sounds good to me.”

Once everyone is in agreement, Cade calls in our order and we all separate to get changed into more comfortable clothes.

Except for Ilya, of course.

I mean, maybe the sweater is more comfortable than the button down. Who am I to say?

Once we finally have our food, we all gather in the living room to eat on the giant sectional couch and catch up on our streaming shows after a couple of weeks away.

Delicious food, fabulous company, great entertainment. Can’t ask for much more, really.

“Oh, Sin,” Cade says as he puts his takeout container on the coffee table. “We forgot to tell you that while we were in L.A., we went to that little bodega you and Matty used to frequent.”

I grin at him, head shaking. Only once we’d settled into life together had they divulged just how often they’d spotted me outside of the club. Not that they were stalking me or anything, oh, no.

“Did you stalk Matty and I when we visited, too?”

“Not at all,” Cade assures as Ilya chimes in, “There was a little surprise waiting for us there, actually.”

“A surprise?”

Garen hums, at his phone, rises from the couch and goes to the front door, which he opens, crouches down, then says something to someone before coming back inside, carrying something in his one hand that’s just out of view.

My gaze narrows.

“Anyhow, it turns out that—”

Cade’s words are cut off by the tiniest meow I’ve ever heard in my life. The sound has me on my feet and moving toward Garen in a flash, who I now see is holding a pet carrier, looking a bit bashful.

“Surprise…” His smile looks more like a wince.

My gaze cuts from the carrier in his grasp to his face and back again, before I extend my arms to the carrier, mumbling something like, “Gimmegimmegimme.”

Ilya rumbles a laugh behind me as we all return to the living room, me carrying the pet crate, which I place gently on the sofa and kneel on the floor in front of it. When I pinch the latch, my heart races as two little blue eyes peer at me from the darkness.

I turn wide eyes of my own on each of my mates. “What is happening right now?”

Cade laughs. “We were passing the bodega on one of the days you were helping at the cafe.”

“And we saw your little friend, the cat.”

“But she wasn’t alone anymore,” Garen muses.

My gaze snaps back to the carrier, when out stumbles a little black ball of fluff, pointed tufts at the tips of its ears. “Oh my gods,” I breathe. “It’s a mini-Princess!”

“Well, Princess had one kitten.”

“And the bodega owner wanted to give her a good life elsewhere,” Cade explains.

“So, we conned your dad into watching her for a couple of weeks so we could get some other things ready for her.”