There was no reason to keep it. The Duskoff viewed him as too great a risk. He’d anticipated getting no farther than the door. Sarafina could go much farther than that if she played along, but she’d have to do it on her own.

Which was why Theo was so pissed.

Drawing a bit of power that made his scalp and tats tingle, he dissolved the glamour. Then he whirled and stalked toward her. “You’re not doing it.”

“You can’t tell me what to do, Theo. I’m getting really sick of you trying.”

She was pissed, too. He glimpsed fire dancing between her fingers, running up and down her arms in tiny fiery rivers of rage.

He turned away from her and walked to the other end of the posh hotel room. “If I have to lock you in the room, I’ll keep you from going back there tomorrow morning.”

“You know you can’t do that. I’ll just burn my way out.”

Theo turned to face her. “This was not the plan. We’re not prepared for this and we don’t have backup.”

“What about Darren and his witches? They’re not far. They’re, what? Four hours away by car.”

His jaw clenched. “You’d still be going in alone.”

“But there’d be backup if I ran into trouble.”

He stared down at her, running out of excuses to stop her. The protectiveness he felt toward Sarafina was like nothing he’d experienced before—or at least like nothing he’d experienced since he’d been seventeen. That memory was what fueled his intense desire to keep Sarafina safe. The last thing he could bear was for history to repeat itself.

And here they fucking were, right on the cusp.

Why he’d developed such intense emotion for this particular woman, he couldn’t say. Maybe it was because he’d taken her from the Duskoff’s clutches, even if at the time he’d thought of her as the enemy.

For whatever reason, the truth of the matter was that for the first time in his adult life, he’d decided that a woman meant something to him. He’d put an invisible, indelible mark on her—a claim. No other person could harm her without risking his wrath. She could not endanger herself without making him seriously insane.

But she was a woman used to taking care of herself, making her own decisions. As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t prevent her from doing this if she chose.

And he disliked the name Darren coming from between her lovely lips. He disliked even more the interest that had been in Darren’s eyes when he’d looked at her back at the Coven.

Was he jealous?