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

“Oh! Those are neat. It’s a new technology that, naturally, started in Japan. The ears pick up on your brain waves, so when your thoughts change, the ears twitch or swivel. I tried them once. They don’t work exactly like our—like real cats’ ears. I tried to be very interested in something on the other side of the room, and they didn’t face forward or change quickly, but they did twitch.”


Tommo snorted. “What’s next? Mentally controlling a robot animal so they can pretend that’s their real body?”


Mateo frowned. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they were working on it. Sounds like something I would be interested in trying. Who wouldn’t be?”


Dazi elbowed Tommo in the ribs. “Yeah, sounds great, doesn’t it, Tommo?” He was tempted to make Tommo wait outside if he remained this stubborn.


Chapter 17