The Royal Military Academy's Impostor Owns a Dungeon [BL]

He could see it now.

It was almost like watching a child come alive after being allowed to go to a once-in-a-lifetime sleepover. That was exactly how his precious son looked at that moment.

Duke Leander would’ve needed far worse eyesight to miss the unmistakable sense of belonging written across Luca’s face, right where one might’ve expected embarrassment or distress instead.

For a father still desperately making up for lost time, it was truly a sight to behold. In fact, Leander already thought this particular moment deserved a place among his ever-growing collection of precious memorabilia.

Unfortunately, that warm, fluttery feeling probably wouldn’t have survived quite so peacefully had the Kyros Duke known what was currently going through his son’s head.

Because his precious baby was already wondering how nice it might’ve been to have more siblings.

Or, perhaps even worse for the completely unsuspecting father, how wonderful it might be to one day have a big family of his own so that his future children could grow up surrounded by something like this.

Had Leander known any of that, he probably would’ve crashed out for an entirely different reason.

As it was, however, the poor Duke remained blissfully unaware. All he could see was how happy Luca looked surrounded by the Mylors, which naturally led him to what he considered the far more reasonable conclusion.

”Then let’s just adopt all of them into our family!” Leander muttered indignantly. ”How come he gets to join the Mylors?! Can’t they all just join ours?!”

Kyle Nox, who happened to overhear that, slowly shook his head just as Duchess Amelia reached over and bonked her complaining husband on the head.

Still, Kyle could only be grateful that this whole thing hadn’t blown up in their faces.

It certainly wasn’t easy watching his little star practically puff himself into a ball while kneeling over there, but according to the Mylor siblings, this was apparently Kyle’s final test after they’d inspected him earlier with enough scrutiny to locate every misplaced strand of hair on his head.

If he could remain objective enough not to coddle Ollie when the mop was clearly in the wrong and deserved a proper lecture from his siblings, then they’d forgive Kyle’s own grave error of somehow forgetting to share the rather important news that he’d married their brother.

So for now, all he could do was stand there and watch the family tribunal unfold.

Besides, there was apparently a reward waiting for him if he survived without interfering.

Baby pictures.

An entire collection, if the siblings were to be believed.

Kyle thought that was a perfectly fair trade.

And perhaps, sometime in the future, once they were both ready, Kyle could give his little star a much bigger wedding ceremony, provided his wife wanted one too. At least then, the rest of the Mylor siblings could actually be there to celebrate with them instead of finding out about yet another important milestone only after it’d already happened.

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But just because one particular set of siblings was doing remarkably well after such an eventful day didn’t mean every pair of siblings across the Empire was enjoying the same kind of heartwarming bickering.

Because elsewhere, at least two pairs of twins were having rather busy nights of their own.

The Azren twins, for one, were practically hounding their father for an explanation, their voices overlapping as they demanded to know what the hell had happened back at the arena and how, exactly, their respected family head had managed to get beaten that badly.

”Father, what happened out there?” Leo pressed, arms crossed tightly. ”You don’t just lose like that.”

”Was there some sort of deal?” Leah added quickly, eyes narrowed in suspicion. ”Or were you actually coerced?”

The Azren patriarch wanted to say that he, too, would very much like to know the answer to that question, but all he could do was let out an exasperated breath and pinch the bridge of his nose as he sat there nursing that inexplicable defeat.

”No,” he finally said, only to pause as though immediately regretting that this was the best answer he could offer. ”None of that. But even if we all teamed up, chances are we’d still end up with the same outcome.”

”What?!”

”No, are you actually serious, Father?”

Of course he was.

The twins looked as though they couldn’t accept his answer, but lamentably for all of them, Caius had meant every word.

Would he be sitting there nursing such a headache and avoiding calls from all those nosy geezers if he had a better handle on the situation?

But while the psychologically wounded Azren Duke was still trying, and failing, to find the right words to tell his children that they should probably start preparing themselves for an unexpected upheaval, another pair of twins was already dealing with a far less amusing version of sibling trouble.

One that surprisingly involved questioning the person they’d known and trusted from the moment they entered the world together.

__

The interrogation room was deliberately plain.

Four reinforced walls enclosed a space barely large enough for the metal table bolted to the floor and the two chairs positioned on opposite sides of it. There were no windows, no decorations, and nothing that might offer even the slightest distraction from the person sitting across from him.

Normally, such a place was reserved for those stupid enough to get caught making trouble.

Today, however, that very same room had a rather unusual occupant.

Cyrion Luxastra.

The hot-headed half of the infamous Luxastra twins and, more importantly, a proud member of Aerun royalty.

But unlike the ethereal, delicate, and seemingly agreeable appearance he normally maintained, the high-profile subject currently looked like he was about three seconds away from biting someone’s head off.

Unfortunately for him, the restraints secured to the table made acting on that particular impulse considerably more difficult. He could still move his hands to some extent, but little else.

Across from him sat a lone interrogator, separated from the furious Aerun royal by nothing more than the narrow stretch of cold metal between them.

A surveillance lens blinked quietly from one corner of the ceiling, maintaining the convenient illusion that it was the only thing watching when there was practically no angle inside that room that wasn’t being recorded by far less obvious cameras.

To be fair, Cyrion hadn’t even been restrained at first.

He’d entered the room looking every bit as harmless and innocent as someone who’d only just woken up in the medical bay could possibly manage, and despite what the twins had actually done, the questioning had begun on surprisingly casual terms.

However, circumstances ended up changing.

After all, what else could the poor Imperials possibly do when their seemingly cooperative guest suddenly went off the rails and slapped a clearly innocent interrogator?

They had the recording.

They had the incident.

And now they had perfectly documented grounds to restrain him.

Of course, some particularly suspicious people might’ve raised a brow at how conveniently everything had unfolded, perhaps even accusing the interrogator of deliberately leading a horse straight to water.

But really, could anyone blame the Imperials for someone else’s terrible temper?