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

“Again, we don’t know that much about each other, but from what I’ve seen, yes, you’ve done some things you’re not proud of, but you know that you did wrong and you’re trying to be a better person, like how you tried to understand the furries better this weekend. You might be a fool for cornering a jaguar in a bathroom and trying to make friends with it, but that makes you a good-natured fool. You’re sweet, Dazi, and I really, really hope this works out because I want to spend more time with you, too.”


Dazi was tingling from head to toe. He was so caught up in Mateo’s praise that for a moment he believed they had passed the shamans’ tests and everything was going to be fine. That was the reality he wanted to experience, ephemeral as it may be. “Do you want to hear about the first time I wore my mountain lion skin?” he asked.


Chapter 49