25. LEOPOLD
twenty-five
I ’d had my mind blown. I knew that was what had happened, but the high was exquisite and clung to me like a second skin.
“Where is the rest of you?” I asked the hive.
We were back downstairs in the kitchen, there was coffee and tea, and I was sitting on one of their laps while another fed me those chocolate-covered strawberries. The only reason I was letting this go on was because my legs were still kind of wobbly on account of that mind-blowing sex.
“We’re at the interview at the yoga studio. For the accounting position.”
My eyes flew open, and I looked at one of them who was sipping his tea, a small smile on his face.
“How’s it going?”
“Good, we think. The werewolf said something about a supportive and nurturing work environment and that you’re welcome to come to a class there. His name is Xander, and he’s a Star-Garbed Wolf.”
I’d heard about that pack. They had their fingers in real estate, and a graduate of Instructor Arick’s class had started working for them. That had been some two months after I had joined the class, and I’d listened to him talking about all those opportunities he was looking forward to while all I had been able to think was, Werewolves are fucking real . It felt like a very long time ago.
“Huh. Yoga.”
“What does that mean?” They sounded amused.
“I don’t know much about yoga. Is that where you get fed candied fruit during? Or is that just sexual afterglow with your hive?”
The one whose lap I was sitting in picked up another strawberry and kissed my cheek when I turned toward it.
“We’re not sure yet ourselves.”
“Hng. Aah gah goh coo caws,” I said, my mouth full of deliciously ripened fruit.
“You’ve got to go to class?” the one drinking tea asked.
I nodded. “Orc.”
“And work,” the three of them said together. “Although perhaps it’s best if you rest for today? The werewolf says we can start tomorrow. We can head straight to St. Auguste and pretend we are you while organizing your new desk.”
I chuckled. “You’re in a good mood. But that doesn’t mean you can pretend you’re me. Look at you. You’re way more handsome.”
They snorted. “We’re not but thank you.”
I stretched, yawned. “What time even is it?” I reached for my phone which they had brought downstairs with me although I’d not felt any inclination to look at it. And to be fair, the hive had distracted me by waiting on me hand and foot. That was really only okay because I’d finally left the virgin lane and was headed toward sexually experienced at high speed.
“Barely noon. We’re touring the yoga studio now, and it looks nice. Very bright and warm. Yoga is good for your posture.”
I groaned. “You want to do yoga?”
There was some shrugging. “Maybe. If you want to.”
“If I don’t have to wear those skin-tight pants, I’ll consider it.”
My hive was a scheming one. I could see the disappointment spread out over three faces, and the one holding me actually sighed into my ear.
“Did you just try to get me to go to yoga for the pants?”
“We were just thinking.” “Our new boss looks good in them, and we were thinking you’d look better.”
“Yeah, right. Okay, where is that book with the school rules? I have to show my resting bitch face at my new job.”
“Your face is beautiful,” they mumbled, but one of them stood to get me my book while another held another strawberry to my mouth.
I ate it, just because the sex had been that good, and I deserved a treat. Then I grabbed the last one, turned, and fed it to the hive, who kissed my fingers and said thank you over his cup of tea.
***
The next few days went by in a flash. I’d always had the feeling that my life had been on pause, but now with the hive around, I could tell it was moving forward rapidly.
Work was…odd. Not so much the actual secretarial part of it, the parts where I got to organize Headprincipal Farrow and reminded him of meetings and whatnot. A lot of that needed to be done by walking over to him and telling him because Farrow was selectively online and had a real talent for making his old PC crash or come up with weird errors.
After I’d handled several of those crashes, I found another gift basket on my desk consisting of sweets and bottled water in various flavors.
The IT Department is grateful for everything you have done, read the card that had come with it. It wasn’t signed, only had their email address.
All of that was normal enough. The odd things were in the enrollment requests and all the interactions I had with the other teachers and the students, except for Adam and Joyce, who managed to be actually helpful.
“No one is really sure, and she doesn’t smell like much, but we think that Ms. Henderson is a mimicry,” Joyce told me, something I’d never have known by myself. She had several more bits of information about other students and teachers on top of all of that.
Adam had decided that coffee runs were cool and that he had to go to a coffee shop outside the school, because bosses like fancy stuff , and they had decided I was their boss.
But nothing beat watching the hive and the two werewolves, especially when the hive was there with three or more.
With my afternoon macchiato, some three weeks in, I watched the lot of them one too-hot afternoon.
“Mr. Hive,” Joyce said, her eyes downcast.
The hivelings had found a table for my office, just a small one, but big enough for four chairs. They currently occupied two while Adam was sitting in a third, and Joyce had walked up next to them, a binder clutched to her.
“That’s not our name.”
“But Secretary Hill said it’s fine.”
The hive sighed, and I mouthed sorry to the one who was sitting in the chair across from my desk and reading over the homework I had done for Instructor Arick’s class.
“Then it’s fine. What is it?”
“Well,” Joyce said, keeping her gaze down and pouting a little, something I’d come to recognize as typical werewolf submission or wanting to be praised.
The hive sighed, but only with one, which told me they didn’t actually mind. “Is it math again?”
“Yes!” Joyce bounced back and forth on her heels. “They said summer term was going to be easier, but I don’t get this.”
For full boarders, St. Auguste allowed extra classes that would let them graduate faster down the line. It was a pretty flexible system, and there were more students who took advantage of it than I would have thought.
Adam, watching Joyce happily taking advantage of the hive’s math skills, slurped the remainder of his iced coffee.
“If the principal hears this, you’ll be written up,” the hive said to him.
Adam put his almost empty cup on the table. “Sorry, Mr. Hive.”
They looked up from my homework again, their unimpressed expression failing to make me feel guilty.
I mouthed the next sorry with some exaggeration, and they went back to reading over what I’d written, almost looking like they were smiling to themself.
“This is just algebra,” a hiveling told Joyce after she’d pulled up the final chair and shown them her binder.
“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.”
I shrugged at the exact moment my phone dinged. I glanced at it to see that Tate had texted me back a Yes, please .
“You’re a hive. You can take care of more than one person occasionally. I’m just going to go and hang out with Tate in the cafeteria, okay?”
The hive held me for a long moment before letting me go. From what I’d learned about them, I knew they hated being apart from me. I agreed with them a little more each day.