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

Ron nodded. “My dad dropped me off this morning, and he’s coming to get me around nine. I want to go to the dance for a little while. I’ve already made a few friends.” He looked over his shoulder to a small cluster of other teenagers, some in fursuits, most in more basics gear. “None of them like big cats like I do though. Which one are you?”


“I’m a mountain lion,” Dazi said. Once again, he was nervous about telling the truth, but at the same time he felt a giddy sense of liberation. He could say that in a room full of people and none of them thought he was crazy. Then again, he didn’t know who was listening, and what they were after. He quickly added, “Or, at least I wish I were.”


Chapter 18