Read Nevermore: The Final Maximum Ride Adventure for Free Online

in a huge circle and begun to head toward home.
    I looked at him, eyebrows raised.
    “You know I love you.”
    I almost dropped right out of the sky. I literally forgot to flap my wings for a couple of seconds, and plummeted about fifteen feet before they started working on their own.
    “I know you were programmed to love me,” I said cautiously, rising back level with Dylan.
    “Maybe I was,” he said. “I don’t know. I just know I do. And I know that love has to go both ways. You might not love me now, but I hope you will, in time. I can wait. I’m not going anywhere.”
    I said nothing, and we flew together wordlessly, higher and higher, as if we could touch the sky.

12
    THERE WERE NO days. There were no nights. There were tubes and bright lights and indistinct voices. And pain. Always, always pain.
    When Angel was finally put into a kennel, she whimpered with relief. This had to be better than the crisp white sheets, the stretcher that meant scalpels and masks and gloved hands always reaching for her. She shuddered violently, thinking of those hands, and shrank into herself. She never wanted to be touched again.
    The kennel was meant for a large dog, but Angel still couldn’t stand upright in it. She felt around in the cage, her hands brushing against the cool metal of the bars. She searched for a water bottle; her throat was sore from the feeding tube. She winced as she shifted her small body inthe cramped space. She was covered with bruises, and her healing wounds stung.
    Angel could hear muffled voices in the hallway, echoes of footfalls on the linoleum floor, the squeak of rolling wheels—seemingly innocuous sounds that now haunted her dreams—but she didn’t cry out. She was way past that.
    “Help!” she had shrieked at first, for days it seemed, as loud as she could. And later, when it was clear no help was coming, she had only croaked “Why?” as they probed and prodded, her voice a thin, wheezy rasp. But there were no answers, so she had stopped asking.
    Angel had always felt stronger and more capable than everyone—well, than Max—thought she was. But in the end, she was still just a little kid, with bones that could snap and a heart that could break.
    She was broken. And totally alone.
    A long, silent sob trapped in her chest, Angel curled up on the thin towel in the corner of the kennel and went to sleep.
    “Wake up!” a voice barked after what seemed only moments.
    So it wasn’t over, then.
    Her heart raced in time to the familiar fear, the dread that made her whole body quiver, but Angel resisted. For several long, delicious moments she allowed herself to indulge the fantasy that it was Max calling her to wake. Even if they were on the run, even if Max was being bossy,even if… Well, anything would be better than the reality she would find when she opened her eyes.
    “Wake up! There’s no sense pretending! Your brain waves show you’re awake.”
    Her blue eyes fluttered open just as a bucket of icy water was dumped on her head. Gasping, Angel scrambled farther into her corner, but she was a trapped animal, and she knew it.
    The back of her head stung unbearably from the icy water and she tentatively touched it with her fingers. A small section of hair had been shaved, and a neat line of small stitches made tiny ridges under her fingers. They’d operated on her brain. A pitiful cry escaped her lips.
    Max , Angel thought frantically, overwhelmed with horror. Max—help!

13
    “LOOK HERE,” the voice commanded. “Pay attention.”
    Angel blinked water out of her eyes and squeezed her hair, feeling chilly rivulets trickling down her back. Outside her crate, the room went dark. Angel saw extremely well in the dark, but then a lit screen flickered on, several feet away.
    She saw a young child, a boy, with pale, almost white hair. He was lying on a table, very still, covered with a sheet. A crisp, white, sterile sheet. Angel shuddered involuntarily, the wounds on her body aching in