Chapter 6

Dazi snatched his clothes from the other side of the door and got dressed. As Mateo did the same, Dazi stared at him. “Your eyes didn’t change.”

“They shouldn’t, this is my natural eye color.”

That, Dazi seemed to accept, until he tilted his head to check out Mateo’s backside. “What about your tail?”

Mateo looked behind him as best he could. The skin on his lower back had light fuzz that gradually darkened into the fur along his tail. “I was born with that too,” Mateo said. He tucked it into the hemmed hole in his jeans. When he looked up, Dazi was still staring, but with even more bewilderment. “…What?”

“You were bornwith a tail?”

“Yeah, my kind have always had tails, and usually jaguar ears too, but my grandfather’s look more human than jaguar, and I was born without them at all. He says it’s because we’ve been breeding with humans too long.” He cocked his head to one side. “Is…is your…conditionnot genetic?”