Mateo, a jaguar nagual descended from Mayan shamans, attends the Northern Nevada Con-fur-ence furry convention to hide in plain sight. Who will look twice at a long, black tail and inhuman yellow eyes when there are neon huskies and dancing dragons around? There Mateo meets Dazi, a mountain lion skin-walker who is at the con with friends from his Shoshone-Paiute reservation. They want to find out if the furries are close to stumbling across their tribe of shifters. When these two big cats rub up against each other, their cultures collide in a way neither Mateo nor Dazi could predict. But Mateo has trouble being entirely human around his alluring new companion, and Dazi puts his tribe at risk when he reveals their secrets to an outsider. Can Mateo and Dazi overcome their natural secretive and bestial instincts to find their purr-fect ending?

Beasts Like Us

The extra time they spent browsing the store nearly killed him. He snatched up the first packet of snack cakes that looked appetizing and a bottle of soda. Mateo bought three sandwiches from the fridge, two bottles of water, a pack of cookies, and a box of granola bars.


“I told you I was starving,” he said through a mouthful of sandwich as they continued on their way to his hotel. The smell of turkey and tomato did make Dazi hungrier, but his stomach was in so many knots he didn’t know how he could keep anything down.


It seemed years before they made it to Mateo’s hotel room. Mateo drank half a bottle of water before he said anything.


Chapter 7