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

This day was easily the strangest in Dazi’s life. A short time ago he had been a real mountain lion interacting with another large cat. Now he had to act like a mountain lion in his human skin and talk to someone pretending to be a tiger. He imagined what he would do if he were in his mountain lion skin, and panicked when he felt himself starting to change. His heart jumped into his throat. Dazi lowered himself to his belly and focused on his human skin.


Chapter 19