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

“I dumped him because I was too much for him and it frustrated me.” Dazi scratched at his nose, eyes staring into the past. “I guess it’s similar to yours, but the opposite. I knew him all my life, too. Hard not to in my tribe. I didn’t pay any attention to him until my dad became his mentor.”


“Aha,” Mateo said. He had noticed Dazi’s cockiness. Not many people would identify another shapeshifter and follow them into a bathroom without determining if they were friendly or not. Is that cockiness or blind arrogance?There was more to the story, obviously, and Mateo wanted to hear it.


Chapter 41