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

After drinking his fill, Mateo put his head under the running water to clear the light throbbing in his head. He hadn’t expected his grandfather to visit like that. A warning text would have been nice so Mateo could have prepared. The water was soothing. Mateo liked swimming, especially on warm sunny days when he dried quickly without having to groom himself. If Dazi were the one grooming him, he might not mind as much. He chuffed a sigh, turned off the sink, and shook the water from his fur. His grandfather had said not to get high hopes, but not to give up either. Mateo wished he knew what that meant. He rubbed his damp head against a towel and pawed the door open again.


The main room smelled different. Sometime in the last few minutes, Kuhma had shifted into his elk form. He was curled up as though asleep, but Mateo wasn’t sure. Kuhma had said elks don’t sleep much. Mateo padded quietly over to him to sniff him. Does he sleep-shift, too?


Chapter 45