Starlit Throne - Chapter 6: Between the Stars and Her
English Version
Rating: M/E
Genres: Romantasy | Sci-Fi | Slow Burn | Space Opera | Fated Mates
Summary:
Cassia Harper thought her biggest struggles were making rent, keeping up with Brighton’s fashion scene, and selling enough handmade crafts to help her family. But when a mysterious, brooding soldier-for-hire with pointed ears crashes into her life, everything changes.
Her past isn’t what she thought. The father she barely remembers wasn’t just some distant traveler and the pin she wears every day? Not just an antique!
Now, with assassins on her trail and a protector who refuses to claim her (even though the tension between them is scorching), Cassia has to decide: will she run from her destiny or rise to it?
Expect:
🔥 Slow-burn with intense tension (and several many very hot payoffs 😏)
🐺 Cosmic pointed-eared protector (who knows she’s his mate but refuses to act on it... at first)
👑 Galactic politics
🌌 A space opera filled with action, smut & drama
🛸 Brighton, UK meets the stars
I’d survived battlefields, assassins, and half a dozen orbital sieges.
But nothing—not one damn thing—prepared me for the idea of being stuck in a ship, alone, with her.
Cass...
She sat in the co-pilot seat, spinning slowly, her eyes wide with wonder as the Earth shrank behind us. The soft glow of the planet’s curve was still visible through the viewport, a halo fading into the black.
And all I could think about was the shape of her mouth.
That was dangerous.
It wasn’t just that she was my mate. It was that I had felt her in my bones the second she touched the console earlier. Like a current of warmth where only cold had lived before.
And now we were alone.
She was humming. Something from Earth, I didn’t know what. The sound was soft, melodic, and it somehow made the silence worse.
I adjusted our heading, plotting the route to the transport hub hidden in the shadow of Jupiter. I needed to focus. Fly. Navigate. Not imagine kissing the one person who made me forget I had orders once.
"Dain," she said, tilting her head, "what happens when we get to this hub thing?"
I cleared my throat, keeping my eyes on the nav-screen. "There’s a station. Off-grid. It’s protected. We’ll regroup and decide from there."
She nodded slowly. "You’ve got that 'I’m not telling you everything' voice again."
I didn’t answer. Couldn’t. If I looked at her, I knew I’d start staring again.
The stars shifted slightly, the sensors pinged.
And then the screen lit up.
Three blips. Fast. Angled. Hostile.
"Hold on," I said.
"What—"
Alarms wailed through the ship. Red lights flooded the deck. Cassia stiffened beside me.
"What is that?!"
"Enemy ships."
She grabbed the seat. "From where?!"
"The moon. They must have been cloaked behind it. They must have been waiting."
I slammed the throttle forward. The ship bucked, metal creaking as we lurched into a tight arc, cutting hard to starboard.
A bolt of plasma skimmed past the hull. Close. Too close.
"Can I help?" she shouted.
"No. Strap in. Don’t move."
She obeyed instantly.
The enemy ships were fast—sleek, predatory, built for ambush. But I knew this ship. Every dent, every pulse, every shriek of her engines under pressure.
We dived beneath a cluster of asteroids, sensors scrambling. I rerouted power to the rear deflectors and spun us into a gravity slingshot curve.
Cassia was silent, her fingers gripping the seat, her knuckles white. I could feel the fear rolling off her, though she tried to hide it. Brave. Always brave.
"Dain," she said, her voice shaking. "If we die, I swear—"
"We won’t."
"—I will haunt your weirdly silent spaceship."
A laugh escaped me. I couldn’t help it.
Another plasma blast. The ship rocked hard. Warning sirens screamed.
The hub came into view. Just beyond Jupiter’s curve—camouflaged, shielded. But the ships were right on us.
I had one shot.
"Hold on!"
I rerouted every ounce of power into the forward thrusters, locked onto the hub’s signal, and punched the emergency jump protocol.
The ship screamed.
Light blurred.
Cassia closed her eyes.
And we shot forward—past the enemy, into the hub’s shielding, through the docking corridor—
—and stopped.
Silence. Then systems stabilized. The ship hissed as locks engaged.
I slumped back in the seat, heart pounding.
Cassia let out a long, shaky breath. "Is it... over?"
"For now."
She looked at me, eyes wide. "I hate space."
I smiled faintly. "You’ll get used to it."
Glossary – Chapter 6
Co-pilot seat – The secondary pilot’s chair in a vehicle or spaceship. (Asiento del copiloto.)
Throttle – A control for managing engine speed or power. (Acelerador.)
Cloaked – Hidden using special technology. (Camuflado, oculto por tecnología.)
Plasma – High-energy matter used as a weapon in sci-fi. (Plasma, una forma de energía usada como arma.)
Slingshot curve – A maneuver using gravity to gain speed. (Curva de honda gravitacional.)
Deflectors – Shields that protect a ship. (Deflectores o escudos de energía.)
Jump protocol – A special process to make rapid movement in space. (Protocolo de salto rápido en el espacio.)
Docking corridor – A passage for connecting to a space station. (Pasillo de acoplamiento.)