Later, as they dried off in the barn loft, Juniper nuzzled up to the newborn while Eli made tea on a hot plate. Mara leaned into him. “You know,” she murmured, “you never asked me to stay.”

There is a primal sense of safety in a partner who is literally built like a tank. Domesticity:

We’ve had centuries of wolf lords and dragon kings. Give me the cow man who wakes at dawn to check on the sick calf, who leaves fresh cream on the porch, and who doesn’t roar—he rumbles , low and safe, when you finally say “I love you.”

: The story follows Steven, a young man trapped in a bleak life with his abusive mother, who finds a strange sense of belonging and "enlightenment" among talking cows in a slaughterhouse.