Page 56 of Five to Love Him

“Yeah, but see that? That two up there?”

They frowned at her. “It’s a quadratic equation, Joyce.”

“Yeah? Uhm. Can you, you know. Explain? Please, Mr. Hive?”

The hive went into that, talked about binomials and how to graphically solve Joyce’s problems.

“Thanks, hive,” I told them over my desk.

Meanwhile, Adam was glaring at Joyce while trying not to be caught glaring. “Mr. Hive, I have a history test coming up. Can you please study with me?”

The second hiveling sitting at the table pointed at the printouts in front of him. “I’m double-checking the order numbers for office supplies, Adam.”

“Yeah, but, uh, that French Revolution stuff is really giving me a hard time.”

The hiveling checking my homework looked over at Adam while the other said, “We told you last week, you just have to study and memorize the important facts.”

“But can you help, please, Mr. Hive? I’m not sure what the important facts are,” Adam said.

I cleared my throat. “Hey, I can finish my homework with Tate. It’s okay.”

“But, Leo,” the hive said. Adam was giving me his biggest smile.

I shrugged. “It’s fine. Besides, Instructor Arick can always tell when you helped me, and then he asks me the hard questions.”

“But we made sure you can answer hard questions about moving from one night court to another, just like we did about everything else,” they mumbled, getting pouty themselves.

“Yeah, but, like, what about the other students? Tate wants hard questions, too.”

Joyce perked up at that. “Like whether he is in a relationship?”

Unfortunately, the werewolf children had picked up more about my after-work life than I’d wanted, and now the two of them—and who knew how many others of their fellow students—were ridiculously involved in Tate and Ezra’s relationship. I’d heard about there being bets on, but I decided it was better not to go digging too deep into that.

“Does that commentary do anything to help you find the x-intersect, Joyce?” the hive asked.

“No. Sorry, Mr. Hive.”

“We’ll help Adam. This once,” the hive said, holding eye contact with Adam until he looked away, which happened pretty quickly. “And we expect you to do well on the test, Adam.”

They handed me my own notebook back, and I left their odd study quintet while sending off a text to Tate, asking him if he was okay to meet up before class.

The hive caught up with me before I reached the end of the hallway, hugging me.

“We’ll join you after we’re done with those werewolf children. We really wouldn’t bother, but we can understand how they feel, being the only ones of their pack in a strange city.”

“They adore you.”

The hiveling rolled his eyes. “They are very needy. They’re just looking for pack dynamics. Maybe we should take them to clean the yoga studio. Yes, maybe that would be good.”

I kissed the hive on the cheek, which was something I’d been doing more often. In public too. They liked PDA a lot.

“You like them too, huh?”

The hive frowned. “We just don’t want them to bother you with their math questions and their issues with the French Revolution.”

“Uh-huh.”

“We’re not opposed to them, but we recognize how they wouldn’t be helpful to you. We shouldn’t be taking care of them instead of you though.”