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

“What did he say?” Mateo whispered to Dazi.


“Nothing,” Dazi responded, perhaps too quickly.


Mateo frowned. “Every time you say that, I believe you a little less.”


Dazi winced. He was supposed to be earning Mateo’s trust, not giving him further reason to be wary of him. Eventually he would have to tell Mateo everything, but now was not that time. A quick lie to diffuse this situation, and we’ll talk later. “Kuhma…thinks the fake-skins are too weird to trust. Even if they don’t know about us, they’re still…unworthy of respect.” Dazi shuddered to think what Mateo would say if he knew those were Dazi’s thoughts, not Kuhma’s.


Chapter 30