New chapter!
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The attack came so fast that none of them had time to brace for it.
The man Evan had hit with the shovel barely understood he had been attacked before a mouth full of white teeth filled his vision.
Venom’s jaw stretched open like a serpent’s.
Wider.
Wider.
Then he swallowed the man and the thing inside him in one violent bite.
Bone cracked between those teeth.
The sound was wet, hard, and close enough to make every nerve in Evan’s body recoil.
The other two finally moved.
Black and gray-black slime crawled over their bodies.
In seconds, two monsters stood across from Venom, similar in shape but different in color, size, and scent.
Two against one.
The store went still.
Venom was still chewing, but those long white eyes never left the pair in front of him.
One symbiote would have been enough to restore most of his injuries.
If this had been about healing, he had other options.
He did not need to hunt his own kind.
If they backed away, he could have let it end there.
If they did not, he would eat until nothing was left.
“Traitor!” one of them snarled.
“You devoured one of us!”
Venom dragged his tongue over his teeth.
“I did,” he said.
“And?”
Symbiotes had laws.
One of the oldest was simple: do not devour your own kind.
Among humans, it would have been a capital crime.
Among symbiotes, it was worse.
It marked the offender for the kind of hunt that crossed cities, countries, and worlds.
Venom knew that.
He also knew he was dying.
“You just signed your death warrant,” the other symbiote hissed.
The pair moved together.
Venom grinned, spread his arms, and the black slime around his hands reshaped into two massive talons.
He met the first one head-on.
One claw caught the symbiote by the head.
The other seized its leg.
Venom lifted him overhead and pulled.
The body split with a tearing sound, stringy black flesh stretching in wet strands before it snapped apart.
Venom bit down on one half, then the other.
Crunch.
The second symbiote struck him in the ribs.
Venom barely moved.
He kept chewing as he turned his head.
Amusement glittered in his long white eyes.
“Little parasite,” he said.
“Did none of you smell the royal blood on me?”
The last symbiote froze.
Royal.
Now that Venom had said it, the scent was impossible to ignore.
It had been buried under blood, injury, and panic, but it was there.
A pressure in the air.
A rank older and higher than anything they carried.
“R-Royal line?”
Venom bared every tooth.
“Runt of the royal line, maybe.
Still royal.
Still more than gutter trash like you.”
Every species had hierarchy.
Symbiotes were no different.
Venom was not the strongest of his kind, not even close.
But his bloodline stood above ordinary symbiotes, and that difference mattered.
It was why the last attack had hurt, but had not broken him.
“Mercy,” the final symbiote begged, backing away.
“Please.”
Venom leapt before the word finished leaving its mouth.
His hands caught the creature.
His jaws opened.
He bit through the skull and tore it free.
The third body collapsed.
All three were dead.
All three were eaten.
Venom let out a deep, satisfied belch.
“Full.”
The black shape folded back into Evan’s skin and left him in control again.
Evan hit his knees and vomited.
Venom was satisfied.
Evan was not.
Permanent fusion meant shared senses.
Not metaphorically.
Not vaguely.
Shared.
He could taste blood.
Raw meat.
Alien flesh.
The memory of bones cracking inside his mouth.
His stomach felt swollen and wrong, like he had swallowed three grown men whole.
“My stomach is going to explode,” he rasped.
I hope you enjoyed this chapter.