Chapter 2

“I’m disowning you all!”

Dante’s own words from earlier that day rang in his ears as he replayed that pivotal moment when he’d stormed out of the palace on Lorr and away from the royal family—his royal family, as it happened, not that it made much of a difference. With four older brothers, he was so far from the throne, he may as well be just another common Lorr warrior.

Even his younger brother, Levi, seemed to get more royal perks than him. Dante remembered how he shook his head as he climbed back into the pod he’d taken down to Lorr from his craft in orbit. It had been easier than bringing his whole ship. But when he was fleeing the planet, it just annoyed him to be flying something that felt like a child’s toy. Taking off in a full-sized spaceship would have been infinitely more satisfying than buzzing away pathetically in the tiny one-person pod he’d rented.

At six-foot-five, he hardly fit into the tiny craft. He didn’t know why he’d hired it in the first place. To avoid drawing the attention of the Jorvlen uprising that occupied parts of Lorr, he supposed. But now that he was stranded, mistakenly on board a ship that wasn’t his, he felt especially stupid for the decision.

Flying away in the pod was the equivalent of slamming a door in anger and then finding out it wasn’t the kind that slammed. He’d been hoping to make a grand exit to go along with his grand pronouncement, especially since his decision to disown his family was directly related to a spaceship.

Not just any spaceship, either—the PulXar Star Cruiser, which his oldest brother Kozien chose to pass on to Levi, not him. Dante was older and thus more entitled to the ship than Levi, the youngest of the bunch, barring their twenty-one-year-old sister, Maraliza.

Just thinking about it was getting Dante angry all over again. Instead of dwelling on it, he’d fired up the pod and lifted himself off his home planet. The sooner he never had to talk to his family again, the better.

As he’d hurtled through the atmosphere and into open space, though, he couldn’t help but think of them. It wasn’t just the PulXar that had gotten him out of sorts. That was just the last in a long line of slights at the hands of his brothers and father.

With seven siblings and a throne on the line, there had always been a hierarchy, always competition. It was relentless. Even in PAPS, the investigation agency he and his brothers owned, there was a clear chain of command. And it wasn’t based on expertise. It was based, of course, on order of birth.

Dante was sick of it. As he’d made his way back to the space station to collect his A62 Nebula—the ship he was stuck with in lieu of the antique PulXar—he decided to push the matter out of his mind.

In fact, he’d thought he might even plan a holiday instead of hanging around the investigation agency, where no one listened to him anyway. He figured disowning the family also meant disowning the family business, and he was totally fine with that arrangement.

Maybe somewhere in the Andromeda Galaxy, he thought idly as the space station came into view.

Before he could plan which resort he was going to visit, though, he heard a ping on his comm. He looked down at his wrist and saw his father’s face, peering into the screen.

After the fight they’d just had, he wasn’t exactly inclined to answer, but something in the king’s face told him this wasn’t about some petty family dispute. Something was seriously wrong.

He pressed the answer button, but he didn’t have time to say anything before his father’s voice came shouting over the ship’s speakers.

“Dante! Maraliza is missing. You have to help take care of this,” the king announced gravely.

Dante’s heart practically stopped beating, and all thoughts of disowning his family slipped immediately from his mind.

“I’m on it,” he replied without missing a beat. “Send me whatever information you have.”

His father nodded before ending the call, and a second later, he got another ping, this time with the names of a few witnesses and their reports. The common denominator, of course, was the word Jorvlen.

Dante scowled as he docked at the space station and returned the pod hastily. Of course, it was the Jorvlen. He should have known they’d do something like this. Kidnapping a Lorr princess was just the next ploy in their war against his homeworld, and he wouldn’t stand for such a slight.

“Bran!” he barked into his comm, calling up his first mate.

“Yes, captain.” The reply came immediately.

“Meet me in Hangar Six. We have something that needs doing.”

Dante sprinted to the rendezvous point, scanning the row of ships for his transporter as he waited for the crew. They were there within minutes, and Dante led the way to the A62 Nebula—the last ship on the dock.

“My sister, Maraliza’s been taken,” Dante told the crew, and he heard the weight in his voice.

His blood ran cold with the thought, and he knew he had to do everything in his power to get her back. He filled in the crew on what he knew, and they all gave him solemn nods.

“We’ll find her,” Bran told him, and Dante knew he had the right crew for the job.

“Then let’s get to it,” Dante replied. He led his crew toward the transporter ship that he hoped would bring his sister to safety.

They piled aboard and took their stations with Dante manning the captain’s position on the bridge and Bran right beside him.

“Iris!” he called up to the ship’s AI. “Fire up the engines!”

Only silence greeted him. “Iris?”

Nothing.

It looked like there was a problem with the software, but they didn’t have time to look into it now. They’d just have to do things the old-fashioned way instead. That was no problem, though. Dante had an experienced crew that could do anything the AI could do, including preparing meals if it became necessary.

“Bran, engines!” he called. Bran was on it immediately, pushing a series of buttons on the control panel that had the ship humming in no time.

He was about to tell Bran to get them on the launch queue when he heard a door slam from somewhere behind him.

“Who the hell are you?” an unfamiliar voice rang out. Dante turned to see a gorgeous human woman standing before him.

For a second, he thought she must have been a stowaway, but she didn’t look like any stowaway he’d ever seen. They were usually scrappy and disheveled—on the run from someone or something, or else too poor to pay for transport on a passenger ship.

This woman was obviously none of those things, and besides, she’d announced herself to them. No stowaway would be so bold as to step out onto the bridge in front of the entire ship’s crew.

Instead, this woman had a fierce look in her eyes, eyes that immediately grabbed Dante’s attention. They were copper-colored and bright, and they shone from her dark face. She had the warm brown skin of a human woman from the Terran nation of India, her long, flowing hair curly and dark.

He wasn’t used to feeling this pull from a human woman, and the tug of it was different from other forms of attraction. She was strikingly beautiful. She was well-dressed in tight black pants, green shirt, and a brown vest that hugged her stunning, daydream-inducing figure.

And Dante suddenly recognized with a start that she wore the star-shaped badge of a captain. Is she commandeering my ship? he suddenly wondered.

Then a second thought occurred to him, and his heart dropped into his stomach.

Am I commandeering hers?

Fuck.