Meet and Greet

For all his gruff exterior, Maverick was quite surprised to find their guest who was styled under the title of “Warlord” was a big softie as he fawned over their newborn puppies. It made him feel a little more comfortable with the otherwise stranger being around his children in such a small, intimate space. Following his introduction, Sirius gave him a brief blessing, but switched to a much more worrying observation. Without missing a beat, the other man asked Venom about her eyes. Immediately the atmosphere in the room shifted. Tension gripped the air like static, and Maverick’s expression changed from peaceful welcoming to alarmed wariness. Venom had reassured him that Sirius was a friend and no foe, but if he had picked up on the Empress’ disability so quickly, what would that mean for others who saw her?

All at once, Maverick’s body grew tense, his foreleg subtly tightening around Venom’s side in a protective embrace out of reflex. He looked from the Warlord to the Empress, breath held while he waited for her to make the decision on how much information she wanted to reveal to their ally. There was a long pause while he assumed Venom debated this very situation. When she did speak, she told him the truth. Mav released the held breath in his lungs in a drawn out and troubled sigh. "We don’t know how it happened. It just… did," explained Maverick with a dejected shake of his head, holding Venom all the tighter to him. "The healers have no idea how it happened either, and they haven’t found any cures yet." He was very deliberate to add "yet" to that sentence. For all his faith, Mav believed they would find a cure for Venom’s ailment.

Dark teal eyes turned back to the Warlord then, fixing Sirius with a deathly serious look that wasn’t hostile, but left no question to the man’s dedication to protecting Venom. "You are the only one outside of her family that knows. If word of this got out…" Ashen didn’t have any enemies, but the ones they did have were ruthless. None outside of this palace could know what happened to Venom until she overcame it.

"Maverick & Venom"