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

“You should give it to Itsapehe,” Dazi said with a grin. “You two could wear them around together, be the cute coyote couple.”


“We’re already the cute coyote couple.”


“Yeah, but now you can—” Dazi almost said, “You can be like that when you’re human,” but caught himself and changed it to, “You can be even cuter.”


“Well, let’s be on our way,” Mateo said. He scanned the room. “And if you happen to see Rosie—oh, wait, she already found it.”


Dazi followed Mateo’s eyes. Rosie had seen them, too. She was at the Fancy Felines booth, waving. She held up a black collar with a bell and shook it happily. Its jingling was barely audible over the chatter, but Dazi could differentiate between it and the jingling of other people’s collars and costumes. Rosie turned and held the collar against her tail, giving Mateo a thumbs up.


Chapter 34