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

Mateo nodded. “That’s good to know. If it comes down to that, I can hold my own in the Spirit World…sort of.”


“Well, most of what my grandfather teaches me has to do with the beneficial magic we do for people, finding things, curing sickness, blessing stuff, but since we’re the strongest things in our area by nature, he never taught me much in the ways of defense. He taught me some things, but he was always, y’know, right there in case I was overwhelmed.”


“I see.” Dazi was of no use there. He had only his experience in receiving his puha. He was better trained to fight off a real mountain lion than a sorcerer. “We’ll go see the chief first. You can talk to him, show him what you can do, tell him about yourself, prove to him what you proved to us this weekend: that you are not only trustworthy, but you are a worthy ally for our tribe. He would be crazy to dismiss you.”


Chapter 48