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

“Great! Do you mind wearing your fake ears while I wear my hood?”


Mateo grinned. “Why don’t I wear your hood and you can wear my ears?”


Dazi laughed. “Even better! Come here.”


They swapped headgear and got together for the photo. It was the closest they had been since the bathroom, and now, where the air wasn’t so foul, Mateo could fully appreciate both the familiarities and the novelties of Dazi’s scent. The smile on his face was completely genuine, and the picture turned out better than he expected. Though he didn’t know Dazi well enough to recognize his default facial expression, his first impression was that Dazi looked particularly pleased with himself in the photo. Mateo thought he looked goofy in Dazi’s fluffy wolf-ear hood, but better goofy than untrustworthy.


“Okay, that should placate her for the time being.” Dazi tossed his phone aside. “I want to hear about your great-great-grandfather.”


Chapter 9