Pirate And Princess In Love

“Then you know I’m busy.”

“Your raid has failed.”

Behind him, someone shouted, “Captain, police breach in ninety seconds!”

The princess’s gaze flicked toward the ship, then returned to him. Her eyes were darker than the bay’s windows, steady and bright with anger.

“Not failed,” Ronan said. “Complicated.”

“You stole a navigation core from a fortified dock and triggered a military response.”

“I was stealing the core quietly until your people locked down the bay.”

“My people?” Her mouth tightened. “You broke into my docking corridor.”

That explained the guards. It also explained why the station had sealed every exit the moment his cutter sliced through the defense grid. The core had been stored beneath the royal vessel’s berth, protected by layers of encryption no ordinary dockmaster would have bothered installing.

Ronan lifted the core between two fingers. Blue light crawled beneath its glass casing.

“You were carrying this?”

“No.”

“Then why did your security teams react when I touched it?”

“Because it belongs to the crown.”

“Everything belongs to the crown, according to crowns.”

A burst of weapons fire hammered the barricade. One of Ronan’s crew dropped behind a crate, clutching his shoulder. The ship’s ramp began to retract, leaving only a narrow opening.

The princess looked at the narrowing gap.

“Your escape route is closing.”

Ronan caught her wrist before she could move. Her skin was warm despite the cold leaking through the bay’s failing seals. She looked down at his hand, then up at him.

The warning in her face was clear.

He released her.

“Stay behind me,” he said.

“I don’t take orders from pirates.”

“Then take advice from someone who knows this dock. The police will scan every ship before letting it undock. If they find you here, they’ll search mine first.”

“Why would they search for me?”

Ronan heard it then: not just the station alarm, but a new tone beneath it. A clean, repeating chime transmitted through every speaker.

“Royal security alert,” the station announced. “The princess is missing from protective custody. All vessels are to remain sealed. Lethal force is authorized against unauthorized extraction.”

The words settled over the bay.

Ronan looked at the princess.

She had gone very still.

“You’re the reason they’re closing the dock,” he said.

“And you’re the reason I’m trapped in it.”

Another impact shook the blast doors. The ship groaned on its landing struts.

Ronan seized the princess’s hand - not her wrist this time - and pulled her toward the ramp.

She resisted just long enough to make him turn.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Somewhere the scanners can’t see.”

“That sounds like kidnapping.”

“It becomes kidnapping if you keep fighting me.”

Her eyes flashed. “And if I don’t?”

“Then it becomes cooperation.”

For one breath, neither moved. Gunfire snapped across the bay. The princess’s fingers remained in his, tense but not withdrawn.

“Fine,” she said. “But if you touch me again without warning, I’ll break your nose.”

Ronan smiled despite himself. “That’s the first useful thing anyone’s said to me today.”

They ran.

The ramp had risen to knee height. Ronan dropped flat and slid beneath it, pulling the princess after him. Her coat caught on the edge. He reached back, freed the fabric, and felt her palm strike his shoulder as she crawled through.

“I had it,” she whispered.

“I noticed.”

They landed inside the ship’s cargo hold as the ramp sealed above them. The vessel lurched away from the berth, engines roaring through the hull. Cases slammed against their restraints. The princess staggered, and Ronan caught her around the waist.

Her breath touched his throat.

For an instant, the noise fell away. Her body was pressed against his, firm and alive beneath the flight coat. He felt the quick beat of her pulse where his hand held her side.

She looked at his mouth, then immediately looked away.

“Let go.”

Ronan did.

The ship tilted hard. She caught herself against a crate, while he braced one hand against the bulkhead.

A scanner pulse passed through the hull. White light flashed beneath the cargo doors.

“They’re sweeping us,” she said.

“They’ll find the ship.”

“Then your plan is poor.”

“My plans improve when people stop appearing in them.”

The intercom crackled. “Captain, police cutters have sealed the outer ring. We can’t clear the dock.”

Ronan glanced toward the maintenance hatch at the rear of the hold.

“Can we reach the spine?”

“Manual access only. The main corridor is blocked.”

He looked at the princess. “Can you climb?”

She gave him an offended stare. “Can you keep up?”

He opened the hatch.

The maintenance spine was a narrow passage running along the ship’s inner frame, packed with coolant pipes and power conduits. Heat rolled from the walls. The metal smelled of oil and hot dust. Ronan went first, crawling beneath bundles of cable while the princess followed close behind.

Every few seconds, the ship shuddered under another scan.

The princess’s knee brushed his boot. Her hand caught the back of his coat when the corridor dropped suddenly. He felt the contact through the fabric and imagined, against his better judgment, what it would feel like without the distance of coats and weapons and alarms between them.

“You’re staring,” she said.

“I’m crawling.”

“You’re doing both.”

Ronan looked back. Her face was inches from his. A loose strand of hair clung to the blood along her cheek.

“You have blood on you.”

“I’m aware.”

“Hold still.”

“I said I’m aware.”

He reached anyway, wiping the blood away with his thumb. The moment his skin touched hers, she stopped breathing.

So did he.

The ship groaned around them. Somewhere beyond the hull, police engines screamed as they maneuvered into position.

The princess caught his wrist.

“Don’t make me regret trusting you for the length of one corridor.”

Ronan’s thumb remained against her cheek. “You trust me?”

“No.”

“Good.”

Her grip tightened. “Why good?”

“Because trust is easier to break when someone pretends it’s already there.”

Something changed in her expression - not softness, exactly. Recognition.

She released him.

“Keep moving,” she said.

They reached a junction where the spine split around the engine housing. Ronan crouched beside an access panel and pulled a wire from the wall.

The princess leaned over his shoulder. “What are you doing?”

“Making us invisible.”

“You said the scanners couldn’t see here.”

“They can’t see the ship. They can hear the maintenance systems. I’m cutting the diagnostic relay.”

“You’ll disable your own cooling grid.”

“For three minutes.”

“And after three minutes?”

“We’ll be somewhere else.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It’s the one I have.”

She looked toward the hatch behind them. A blue scanner beam swept across the metal, slow and searching. It paused directly over their position.

Ronan twisted the wire.

The ship went dark.

The silence that followed felt more dangerous than the alarms. Without the engines, he could hear the princess breathing. He could hear his own pulse. He could hear the faint tick of cooling metal.

The scanner beam moved on.

For three minutes, they were ghosts.

The princess lowered herself beside him. In the darkness, her shoulder pressed against his.

“Why were you stealing the core?” she asked.

“Because it contains a route.”

“To where?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“That’s reckless.”

“I’ve been called worse.”

“You broke into a royal dock for a mystery.”

“I broke into a royal dock because the signal inside that core matches a broadcast I’ve been chasing across six systems.”

The princess turned toward him. “What broadcast?”

“A voice repeating coordinates and one word.”

“What word?”

“Hope.”

Her breath caught softly.

Ronan watched the darkness where her face should be. “You know it.”

“My father’s war council has been tracking the same transmission.”

“Your father wants it?”

“My father wants to destroy it.”

“Of course he does.”

“You don’t know what it promises.”

“I know what men do when they hear a promise they can’t control.”

The princess’s sleeve brushed his hand. “And what do pirates do?”

“Run toward it.”

“Even if it’s a trap?”

“Especially then.”

A bitter laugh escaped her. “That is not courage.”

“No. It’s desperation.”

The word stayed between them.

The princess shifted, and the metal beneath her creaked. “I was sent to the dock to authorize a military convoy.”

Ronan waited.

“I was supposed to sign an order sending ships into the border colonies. The broadcast interrupted the briefing. My father called it enemy propaganda.” Her voice thinned, though she fought to keep it steady. “He told me to sign anyway.”

“And you didn’t.”

“I came here to find the source.”

Ronan stared at her.

She turned toward him. In the faint emergency glow returning beneath the panel, he saw the fear she had kept hidden behind her anger.

“If I go back,” she said, “I become the seal on a war I don’t believe in. If I run, my family will call it treason. Either way, people die.”

The ship’s systems flickered. Red light touched her face.

Ronan had spent years believing royalty feared losing power. He had not considered that a princess might fear becoming powerful enough to kill strangers with a signature.

“You could have told me,” he said.

“You kidnapped me before asking.”

“I invited you aboard.”

“You dragged me under a closing ramp.”

“That was the invitation.”

Her mouth nearly curved. It vanished before it became a smile.

Police sirens rose outside the hull.

The three minutes were over.

Ronan pushed the panel closed. “There’s a service hatch ahead. It opens into the dock’s waste-transfer tunnel. We can reach the outer ring from there.”

“And your crew?”

“They’ll scatter if they have to.”

“And me?”

He looked at her.

The question was not about the tunnel.

Ronan thought of the royal alert, the war order, the broadcast hidden inside the stolen core. He thought of the way her hand had held his wrist, not gently, but as if she needed proof he was still there.

“You come with me,” he said.

“That sounds like another order.”

“It’s a choice. Mine is to take you somewhere the police won’t find you. Yours is whether you believe I’ll take you somewhere better.”

Her eyes held his.

“Better than what?”

“Better than war.”

For a moment, she seemed ready to argue. Instead, she stepped close enough that her coat brushed his chest.

“Don’t promise me hope,” she whispered. “I’ve had enough men promise things they wanted me to believe.”

“I’m not promising hope.”

“Then what are you promising?”

Ronan looked at the blood on her cheek, the fear beneath her composure, the stubborn lift of her chin.

“That I’ll keep looking.”

The answer unsettled her more than a grand vow might have. Her gaze dropped to his mouth again. This time, she did not look away.

“Then keep looking,” she said.

The hatch alarm flashed green.

Ronan reached for the wheel. Before he could turn it, the princess caught the front of his coat and pulled him down.

Her kiss was brief, fierce, and entirely deliberate.

It tasted of smoke and cold air. Her hand remained against his chest, giving him every chance to step back. He did not. He touched her jaw, careful now, and kissed her again until the warning sirens forced them apart.

She breathed against him.

“That,” she said, “was not cooperation.”

“No,” Ronan said. “It wasn’t.”

A violent clang shook the maintenance spine. Police cutters had latched onto the ship.

The princess released his coat.

“Open the hatch.”

He did.

They plunged into the station’s maintenance tunnel as the ship behind them erupted with shouted commands. The passage narrowed, swallowing them in steam and darkness. Ronan ran with the navigation core strapped to his side and the princess beside him, her hand locked around his.

Behind them, the station speakers came alive.

“Priority alert. The princess is aboard the pirate vessel. Repeat: the princess is with the pirate. Seal every transit route.”

The tunnel lights shifted from red to black.

Ronan stopped at the bend.

The princess looked back toward the pursuing voices, then forward into the unlit passage.

“You said this would make us invisible,” she whispered.

Ronan tightened his grip on her hand.

“I said it would give us three minutes.”

“And now?”

Now the entire orbital dock was hunting them together.

He drew her deeper into the maintenance spine.

“Now we find out what hope costs.”

End of chapter one. 9 more chapters in the full book.