Novel & Cerita Blackwood Treasure Maps 3

I plugged it into the encrypted terminal and waited. The file unfolded like a crime scene. Photos. Reports. Signatures. Diagrams. Project: NYX Subject 03: Ivy Sinclair-Blackwood I sat there. Frozen. Staring at the name printed in sterile black ink. Blackwood. Not Sinclair. Blackwood. My chest ached like something sacred had been torn out by force. I clicked deeper into the files. Embryonic development notes. Neural adaptivity scores. Trauma-resistance calibration. They hadn’t raised me.

I ask in surprise as I look down both ends of the hall. Victor’s expression is sombre, not his usual effervescent self. “This came for you,” he says holding out a black envelope with ‘Blackheart’ scrawled on it in beautiful gold calligraphy. I take the envelope from his hand and even though I know what I’ll find, I still turn it over to look at the back, sealed with gold wax with a blood drop symbol embedded in the wax and I suck in a breath. “I’m sorry, Heart,” Victor says, his voice full of regret. I give him a smile, “You have nothing to be sorry for, thank you for bringing this to me,” I say kissing his cheek.

Blackwood. "I forgot," I muttered. The next message came immediately: "Do it now. And don't scream." Don't scream. That alone made me suspicious. I opened the app and logged in, and when the page loaded I went completely still. The profile picture was from the gown launch, elegant, mysterious, untouchable. Mrs. Blackwood, exactly as intended. But that wasn't what made my mouth fall open. It was the number sitting beneath it. Twenty million followers. I blinked. Looked again. Still there, not a glitch, not my eyes playing tricks. Twenty million. My hand flew to my mouth. Even Miranda hadn't reached that.

The map inside was a strip of treated hide marked with wells, stones, collapsed roads, and names scratched out so many times the surface had gone thin. Lorelai spread it across the command table. Her burned palm hovered above Greyhaven’s mark. Light rose through the hide. Lines formed one by one, answering the stones outside. Greyhaven. Blackwater. A buried marker beneath the chapel vault. Three dead roads leading east. Two broken lines ending at blank spaces where the map had been cut. Karl stood behind her, close enough that his breath stirred the hair near her ear. “Stop if it hurts.” “It already hurts. That is not the same as stopping.”

She shifted slightly, but did not wake. Good. She needed her rest. She needed to be strong. Because one day, she would stand where I stood now, carrying on the legacy that I was about to carve into the world. I traced a finger over one of the maps, my eyes narrowing as they landed on the Blackwood estate. I had never been there, not physically. But I had studied it, every inch, every vulnerable point, every weakness they thought they had hidden. Julian Blackwood was powerful, but he was not invincible.

Two were missing. The feed cut to black. Ethan slowly took off his headset. He placed it on the table. The plastic cracked under his grip. He turned to Emily. The room was deadly silent. Lord Blackwood was looking at her with open contempt. Seraphina was smiling—a small, satisfied smile. "I..." Emily stammered. "I thought..." "You thought wrong," Lord Blackwood said. "You nearly killed twenty of our best men because you cannot read a map." "It was a mistake!" Emily cried. "The colors... they shifted!"

I am directionally challenged. I don't remember routes well, and I get lost quite easily. Wyatt Zimmerman, my best friend, refuses to believe me and insists on helping me fix this problem. He even gets Queenie Jackson, my foster sister, and Yvonne Lambert, my childhood sweetheart, on board to put me through "special training". They get off the subway before I do whenever we travel, leaving me alone at the station. They quietly leave through another entrance whenever we go shopping, leaving me wandering alone like a fool as I search for them. They always say it's to train my sense of direction. I step away to use the restroom during lunch today, and by the time I return, the three of them

“I’ve seen creepy forests before, but this one takes the prize. It’s like it’s waiting for us to mess up.” Vivienne’s lips quirked into a faint smirk as she adjusted her dagger. “The Blackwood isn’t going to give us a warm welcome, that’s for sure. Keep your guard up.” Crane studied the resonance map as they walked, his brow furrowed. The glowing mark that represented the fracture pulsed faintly, but its position seemed to shift subtly with every step. “The map’s readings are inconsistent,” he muttered. “The energy here is throwing everything off. It’s like the forest itself is interfering.”

"He's demanding audience, Alpha. Says he has a proposition that might prevent... unpleasantness." Unpleasantness. Such a delicate word for the kind of territorial war that could paint these mountains red with supernatural blood. I found Blackwood waiting in the courtyard like he owned it, flanked by three wolves who moved with the particular swagger of creatures who'd never learned proper respect for established territory. He looked older than I remembered—gray threading through dark hair, lines around his eyes that spoke of years spent in exile—but his amber gaze held the same calculating intelligence that had made him dangerous three decades ago.

Written right across the front in bold, black letters were the words: **THE THORNE PACK TREASURE HUNT. I frowned, my eyebrows pulling together. The Thorne Pack treasure hunt? What the heck did that even mean? Since when did my pack have a treasure hunt? Well, I was about to find out. With shaking fingers, I flipped the document open. My eyes went wide, and my entire body froze solid. It wasn't a treasure hunt at all. Right there on the first page was a highly detailed architectural blueprint—a map showing exactly how Adrian and his father planned to build a massive, underground tunnel leading from the Blackwood pack territory all the way across the border into the Thorne Pack.