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 arguing became so loud that the earth itself grumbled in annoyance. The Spirit heard the earth’s grief and, unable to stray far from the water, changed into the water buffalo and stamped his mighty hooves until the ground beneath the village shook. Soon every man, woman, and child, fell to the ground as though dead.


“In their sleep, the tribe was taken to the Spirit World, where the water Spirit could speak to them all. ‘Here you may speak to any creature,’ the Spirit told them in its buffalo form. ‘If they agree to give you their skin, then you may perform the ceremony.’


“So all the people divided and went off in search of their chosen animals. For those who didn’t want to wear an animal’s skin, they merely asked for blessings. All had to choose wisely, because they could only receive one blessing, so some, especially the children, were allowed to enter the Spirit World at a later time to choose their guardian. This was how the first puha was granted.


Chapter 8