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

Mateo shrugged. “Like I said, not much changes in my life. A few camping trips to remote forested areas with my family, got to swim in a lake once, but these days there aren’t that many secluded vacation spots. That’s why I came to the Con-fur-ence. Everyone is convinced my eyes and tail are part of a really well-designed costume, and I get to feel normal for a while. Well, as normal as one can feel when they’re surrounded by people in fursuits.” He cocked his head to one side. “So why are you here?”  3


Dazi’s heart clenched. “We’re not supposed to be here,” he said. “My tribe…well, to say they don’t like furries is a bit of an understatement. We call them fake-skins because to us it looks like they’re trying to be like us, but without the—” He almost mentioned the spiritual part of the ceremony, where the human soul joined with an animal’s as the animal blessed the person with its skin. “Without the magic powers,” he said.


Chapter 10