He had changed into his normal attire, he wouldn't want to see her while he was in his khaki. Getting into his car, Na'im wished there was a way he would run away and someone would take care of everything for him. He wished he had an identical twin with whom he could switch over with whenever he so wished. Everything was just so hard on him that he just wanted a day's rest.

But right now, he had to do what was right, which was to go and see his so called wife. He drove out of the barracks, ignoring Hafiz that had saluted him and was flashing him a wicked grin because they both knew where he was headed to. On his way to the camp, Na'im thought of what to say to her. What he would go there to her as and if even if she would be able to recognize him because somehow, the girl seemed too dull for his liking.

He parked his car and stayed there for some minutes, there was a huge thong of people gathered at the centre of the field and from where he was, he could hear someone crying even though those watching the supposed show had blocked his view from everything. He walked out of the car, locked it and aimed at the matron's office when something caught his attention, the crowd had dispersed and he caught the face of the one that was getting beaten. Damnation!

Na'im didn't know when he rushed towards the crowd with his blood boiling with each step he took. She was crying so hard, running away from the circle as she tried so hard to rescue herself from the merciless beatings of the matron as she insulted her ancestors. He couldn't believe what his eyes were showing him, it couldn't be Maryam getting this treatment, right?!

She couldn't speak, she could only cry and he didn't know why he stood there, rooted to his spot as he watched her got beaten nearly to her death. He brought his phone out and dialed Hafiz's number immediately, "Bring the team to the refugee camp, come armed." He ended the call and gave no room for further questions.

At the same time, the matron had lashed the huge stick she used in beating her, "How dare you do that just when the governor had arrived to check out on you guys?! Do you want me to lose my job?! You've been a problem to me since the first day you came here and I'd die if I don't teach you a lesson!" She fumed as she kept on beating her and while trying to run for her life, Maryam tried to run away but she bumped into his rigid figure and when she looked up with her body trembling, her arms and legs patched with blood and sweat as her face was a mess of her tears, she saw his face.

He looked like a raging bull as he stared at the matron that yelled at the other girls to bring the girl back to her. Maryam ran and hid behind him, her trembling hands clutching onto his shirt as she cried as painfully and bitterly as she could. "Save me, please." Her words were barely coherent, but she needn't to say the words out before he would be able to know what she meant. He had seen it from the first look she had flashed him. How hopeless she looked and when realization hit her, there was a sense of relief that surrounded her.

"Come back he-"the matron had shouted but her words became guttural when she saw Na'im. His now bloodshot eyes that were filled with nothing but anger looking intensely at her that her bladder instantly got filled with urine. What had she gotten herself into? Before, it was the governor. And now it was this soldier that seemed too merciless to let her live?

Na'im softly yanked Maryam from his back and she was shaking her head as she cried. He held her wrist, but today it seemed to be her least of worries as he began to walk towards the now trembling matron. Maryam turned to face him while she kept on shaking her head when there seemed to be just a feet away from her and the matron.

"You can continue beating her as much as you want." His words were barely audible due to how much his heart was seething with too much anger and how dark clouds had hovered over his eyes. "I suggest that you kill her, so it would only be fair for the type of punishment I've prepared for you."

She immediately went to her knees, it didn't matter whether he was in his personal wears, she knew he was capable of killing her if he wanted to. The siren that filled the entire camp was what brought their attention to the gate and the army vehicle pulled over, as soldiers began to hop down from the vehicle, making a thud on the ground. With one wave of a soldier's gun, the girls ran back to their hostels, leaving just Maryam that was still trembling with Na'im holding her hand and the matron on her knees.

Hafiz rushed to them, yet, when he saw the state Maryam was in, how blood was patched all over her body and the stick that laid beside the matron, he shook his head. "It can't be that she got beaten this much, right?"

Na'im turned to look at him, and the expression he saw on his face was enough to make him believe all his assumptions and he began to seethe in anger. "Take care of this woman and make sure she's dismissed from her post today. Bring her to the barrack for me." He said through gritted teeth and he didn't wait for them to chorus the 'Yes, Sir!' As they used to before he gently dragged Maryam to his car.

He placed her down in his passengers seat, sat on the driver's seat before he drove out of the camp in a high speed. He drove for a long time, not knowing where he was going to take her to. What he was going to do with her or anything. He just wanted to get her out of the camp and the more he heard her cries the more he wanted to go back and pull the trigger on that woman's throat. The more he stared at her tattered clothes and how blood had stained them, the more he hated himself for doing this to his wife.

He knew, she didn't become his wife in the circumstances he would have wanted. But she was still his wife, and in the eyes of Allah, she was his wife just as same as it would have been, if he had married one of the bunch of wedding dates he had in his phone. He knew he didn't directly do this to her, but he was like the middle person of everything. If it hadn't been for him, if he hadn't added her name in the list of survivors, if he didn't bring her even though her name was on the list, she wouldn't have suffered this way.

He had no house in Maiduguri, and he knew his plans of taking her to the orphanage were canceled the moment he saw her getting beaten merciless. He had to take care of her like he had promised her father he would, and he would have to keep to his words. Na'im sighed as he tried to set his thoughts right, first, she needed to eat. From the way she had obviously lost weight even though she wasn't fat or even chubby before was enough to tell him that she hadn't been eating well in the past two weeks.

And clothes, he realized. This was the clothes she had the day he had brought her to the camp, was it that they didn't give her the clothes the government prepared for them or she simply didn't agree to put them on? And he would need to find somewhere temporary to keep her before he thought of the best thing to do. As much as he didn't want Hafiz's opinion on this, Na'im knew he was the best person to consult.

He parked the car in front of an eatery and turned to look at her. She still had her eyes clenched and her arms wrapped around her body as she shivered slightly. He turned the AC off for her and cleared his throat, but she didn't open her eyes or even moved to show she was aware of his presence in the car. "Look here," he called out, and Maryam gulped down a lump in her throat before she opened her eyes and looked up at him. It might've been long since she last saw him, but she knew so well of his orders on her.

"What do you want to eat? I'll get you something to eat, then we can stop by and buy some clothes for you." She simply shook her head and he knew she didn't even understood what he meant. So, he said it loudly and slowly this time, she shook her head again, albeit she had understood what he meant.

Na'im softly hissed before he walked out of the car and bought all the things he laid his eyes on. He came back to the car and found her on the same spot he left her just that she was no longer crying now, but she had her eyes closed. He drove off without saying a word to her and when he stopped by at a boutique to buy something to wear for her, Na'im realized he didn't even know her size.

The sales girl walked up to him when she saw him fumbling through dresses. "How may I help you, sir?" She asked with a business-like smile on her lips.

He sighed and gave up, "I want to buy a dress for my..." Why the hell did he have to put the 'for my' in his sentence? It would've been okay without them. "My sister." He concluded and hissed under his breath while he looked at the dresses with a confused look. "I don't know her size, I don't know if you can help me choose two dresses for her, please?"

"How old is she?"

"Hold on, I'll ask her right away." He pulled his phone out with a shy smile, wondering which brother wouldn't know the age of his sister as he tried to fake call the so called sister before he went to the car and leaned through the window. "What's your age?" He doubted if she would ever know her size, so the age thing would work better.

She turned and flashed him a look that meant she didn't understood what he had said. Na'im wanted to yell her ears off at how stupid she was, but he knew better than to do that. "How old are you?"

"I'm 16 years old." She managed under breaths and he walked back to the shop, forcing himself not to babble about her age. What in the world had happened to him? Like, he knew she looked like a girl and even though her age had never occurred to him, he had never thought that she was just 16 years old!

He bought the clothes still pondering over her age and as he drove around the town of Maiduguri, Na'im wondered what would be his next move. He hardly associated with his relatives, and even if he did, this was a girl he wanted to hide from everyone in his life, he couldn't take her to anyone's house. And the palace was a place he would make sure she didn't even go close to for the rest of her life.

That left him with one choice, the hotel. He knew it wasn't safe for a girl of her age to stay in a hotel but what would he do? That's the only place he could keep her. And it wasn't like he had a friend apart from Hafiz-whom stayed with his two other male siblings that studied in Unimaid- for him to consider taking her to a friend's house. He parked in the only hotel he knew of its exact location in Maiduguri and after gathering all the nylons he had in the car, he turned to look at her. He was glad that it was very late in the evening and darkness was beginning to embrace the sky, no one would notice or even recognize him.

"Stay here, I'll come back to take you with me." She immediately shook her head, as tears began to pool her eyes. He knew what she was afraid of, that he might never be back just like what he did to her when he took her to the camp, he sighed. "Look, even if I was going to abandon you, I wouldn't do that in my car. Stay here, don't talk to anyone and I'll be back in few minutes." He left without waiting for her response because he knew the best he would get would be a head shake or a nod.

He booked a suite for her, because for now he didn't know the number of days she would spend in the hotel so it would only be better if she got a better place. He came back and found her as she had her head resting on the window while she slept. He tapped her shoulder slightly and immediately jerked his hadn't away before she opened her eyes. "Let's go in."

•

"Where are you now?" He had asked Hafiz over the phone. He was in the living room of the suite, after he had threatened her enough to have her go into the bathroom to take her bathe while he waited. He knew it would be ridiculous to the fact that she was his wife, but funny enough, deep down he knew he was never going to accept this marriage and it would end at the stage he knew she could live on her own out there. So why would he act like it was something real?

"I'm on my way to home from the barrack. And you?" Na'im told him where he was and the gasp that escaped Hafiz's lips forced a laughter out of his chest.

"What? I have no where to take her to, Hafiz. And I can't take her to the orphanage now. What do you suggest that I do?" He sounded so hopeless that it touched Hafiz's heart. He knew Na'im was the type that hardly got himself into trouble because he hated the stress the aftermath of that trouble would cause him, and having to deal with this was something that would certainly take a toll on him.

"Which hotel is it? I'll be there so we can talk." It took him only fifteen minutes to arrive, and when he did, he found Na'im seated with his head in his hands as he thought deeply. "Captain!" Hafiz saluted him and Na'im waved his hand dismissively at that.

He sat down and spoke, "I don't want to leave her here alone as it's not safe for her either. She's just 16 years old, and I can't take her home. I can't take her to the orphanage either because what happened today might repeat itself. But then I don't have a house in Maiduguri to keep her. Tell me, Hafiz, why in the world is this happening to me, why do I have to be in this mess?"

Hafiz sighed and stared at the solemn expression on Na'im's face. He gulped down the water he saw on the table and regained his composure. "You can't question why Allah tests you, Na'im. You've had a rather smooth life. You were born with not just a silver spoon, a golden spoon. You're the first prince of such a rich and reputable kingdom, and in your work; a respected Captain. Don't you think that you've had everything so easy that Allah might want to test you to see how you can act? If you'd forget all the blessings he had bestowed upon you and fret over something as feasible as this?"

He cut him off even though his words had got to him and he believed every word he had uttered but, "Feasible? How can you term what I'm going through as feasible?"

He chuckled and leaned back on the chair, "It's feasible as you have a lot of options to handle it. Buy a house, bring a maid and two royal guards from the palace to take care of her in the house. You can put her back in a school, take care of her education and when she's going to the university, take her abroad to study, because we all know you can afford it. At the same time, through all those years, remind her that she's still your wife, and when she's done with her degree, you both can decide whether or not if you want to keep the marriage or go your separate ways. If you choose the latter, you can still keep her in the house and get a job for her until she finds a suitable husband to get married to. Marry her off to him, do all the things a father will do to his daughter and you've paid the debt you owed to her father. You've fulfilled the promise you made to a dying man. You've protected her and gave her the best life she could only dream of." No words had sounded better than these, and right at that moment, Na'im knew that would be the best thing to do, just that he would divorce her before she left for the university, so that while being there, she would be free to meet whoever she wanted and fall in love with someone while he became a guardian to her and protector, just like he had promised her father he would.