BooksMaximum Ridehawkstar2Max's Wedding

Disclaimer! I don't own Maximum Ride or the wonderful characters!! That all belongs to the brilliant James Patterson!!

Chapter One: Dresses

Six years after MR 4 . . .

Max POV

"Now, all you have to do is suck it in a little more!" Nudge encouraged me as she tried to zip the last of the inches on my dress where my wings disturbed the zipper a little bit.

"Max!" Angel and Ella both said in a gasp. "You look—beautiful!"

I bit down hard on my lower lip. Yes, I was in a dress. Yes, it was by choice. Yes, Fang and I were about to be married.

I could remember the day that it happened. The day that he proposed.

It was a few months ago, while the flock and I were in the mountains again. We ran there, to our old trusty cabin, immediately after we'd taken down the School.

Okay, so I won't go into great detail, but let's just say that Iggy and the Gasman had a lot of fun building the biggest bombs they'd ever made. And it just-so-happens that we happened to be soaring over the School when the bombs happened to drop out of Iggy and Gazzy's pockets and happened to land on the main building of the School.

But, naturally before that we caused a little of a diversion so that all the experiments could escape and—hopefully—not be killed.

Which takes us back to the cabin. After our story kind of got out, we found a note on the cabin door saying something along the lines of "free to bird-kids." But me being the paranoid leader that I am, I had us staked out around the place for a while, just to make sure it wasn't a trap.

And, I guess seeing as how we just got done with the whole dress ordeal, you can guess that it wasn't a trap and we are all alive.

Any-who, I noticed Angel getting a little antsy and smiling hugely after helping clean up from dinner. Iggy was listening to his iPod, supposedly, and smiling, Nudge and Gazzy were drying plates and stacking them, giggling like little schoolgirls.

"What is going on?!" I ended up shouting in frustration.

Angel smiled sweetly up at me, even as a twelve-year-old, she had the baby face that she always had had.

"Nothing Max! Everything's okay!" then she went back to petting Total and Akila.

I huffed and, after looking around the small kitchen, noticed that Fang was nowhere to be seen.

"Where'd Fang go?" I asked. It wasn't like I could help myself. I loved Fang. I loved him way more than a brother. So naturally I'd wonder where he suddenly disappeared to!

"I think he's on the roof again," Total answered me.

"Um, thanks." I said as I walked around Iggy's sprawled out body on the floor to get to the sliding doors to the balcony.

I pulled the ancient, creaky doors back, instantly regretting it because now Fang knew I was here.

With an irritated huff, I snapped out my wings and landed, gracefully I might add, on the roof where, sure enough, there sat Fang, staring out at the stars until his night-dark eyes flittered down on me. We were both twenty by now, and taking every day as a blessing, because we didn't know when or how we were going to die.

"Hey." He said, short sweet, and with that beautiful smile that could light the world. Well, it did my world at least.

"Hey, what're you doing up here?" dumb question, dumb, dumb, dumb.

Fang rubbed his eyes, then threw his arms behind his head and flopped back against the roof, staring up at the sky.

"Just thinking about too much stuff at once. My brain's probably gonna explode." He mused.

We both laughed, then I lay down next to him. I closed my eyes and thought about the last few weeks. Building the bombs, destroying the School, keeping my flock safe.

Then my breath caught in my throat.

I'd barely noticed Fang's swift movement to leaning on his elbow, but I did notice that he was looking at me and stroking my hair.

He was carefully sweeping my tangled mat of curls away from my face, and then trailing his hand down my forehead, my jaw line, and finally ending at my chin, to which he turned my face towards him.

"Max?"

I could hear confusion, trust, worry, joy, and love coming from his voice.

I kept my eyes shut, dreaming silently to myself, when I was pulled from my dream by the feel of Fang's lips on mine.

My eyes opened for half a second to find out that Fang was now lying next to me, with one hand under my chin and one at the back of my neck, pulling me closer to him.

But he didn't have to worry about that; now that we had the School and every other genetics lab out from under our skin, the world was our backyard. We were free. So I carefully put my arms around the back of his neck and held him closer to me. Accepting his kiss with all my soul.

After what seemed like an eternity, I started to get dizzy, and realized that I hadn't taken a breath yet. Fang pulled away and chuckled, but kept his hand at the back of my neck, and pulled me up and into his strong, metal arms.

"So, what now, Max the Invincible?" he asked softly as he ran his hand up and down my arm to keep me warm.

To hell if I know! I wanted to scream. I was just happy that I could now have Fang and not have to worry about any dumb whitecoats or anything ever again.

"Um, take it as it comes?" I guessed, shrugging. It just simply felt good to be in his arms.

"What happened to the Max that always has a plan?" he asked, jokingly.

I looked over the mountains, into the sky, until I found the brightest star, pointing to it, I said, "There, she high-tailed it outta this freaky place and hit the stars!"

I could feel Fang chuckling, his rock-hard chest cradling me.

And boy did it feel great!

We sat there for a while longer, listening to the TV cartoons blaring right below us. The sound of the kids laughing, of Akila barking. Then I heard Fang rustle behind me.

"Am I too heavy?" I asked, which was another stupid question. I weighed what? About a hundred pounds, give or take now that I've gotten taller. But Fang was the strongest and almost tallest of our flock. Iggy still stood over him.

"No, um, Max?"

I could feel his heart accelerate and his hand start to sweat. What was going on?

"Yeah?"

"Well, you said yourself that we were just gonna take life as it came now, right?"

Where was he getting with this?

"Um, yeah, why?"

He shifted under me and took a raggedy breath.

"Um."

"What's wrong Fang?" I was almost losing my patience.

"We're staying together, right?"

"Well, yeah, I mean, the flock has to stick together. We don't know how much longer we may have until we—"

"Would you marry me?"

I froze. I remember my mouth dropping and my breathing stopping. Fang shook me a little.

"Max?!" I vaguely heard his panicked voice.

"Yes, yes of course Fang."

I heard him exhale in a jagged breath, and then he started laughing. Then, gathering me up in his arms, he started crying. Yup, that's right, crying.

"Thank you, Max. I'm sorry I may not have been the most emotion-showing person in the world, but I love you. I really, really do." He said laughing and crying into my shoulder as we sat on the rooftop and held each other.

I smiled. "Me too Fang, me too." Then I, the wonderful, powerful, invincible Maximum Ride, started to cry.