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

“Hey, Mateo!” she said brightly. “Are you here to talk to the newbies, too?”


“I already did.” Mateo jerked his thumb at Dazi and Tommo. “These two are fur-curious, so I’m showing them around. This is Dazi, and this is Tommo. Guys, this is Maggy and her boyfriend, Cliff.”


Maggy smiled at Dazi briefly, but didn’t make eye contact. Not only was Dazi mildly offended, he worried she might know what he was somehow, that maybe she felt guilty for what they were planning. He took a deep breath and told himself once more that he couldn’t make assumptions like that. If Mateo was right, this was all a coincidence and there was nothing to fear.


“Why are you wearing wolf ears?” she asked Mateo.


“Meta-cosplaying,” he replied with a grin. “I’m a jaguar dressed as a wolf.”


Maggy and her boyfriend laughed. “That is meta! I didn’t think animals could be furries.”


Chapter 16