A baby is born without crying. The doctors can't explain why.
Dr. Evelyn Hart injects her blind, limbless newborn with an experimental gene therapy at three in the morning. By dawn, the baby has fingers. Thirty-seven miles south, in a classified military facility, her husband feeds the baby's blood to a dying weapon—a teenage boy whose body produces a compound that rewrites human biology through love and dependency. Breathe near him and you become attached. Stay too long and your cells begin to change. Leave and the withdrawal kills you.
The compound doesn't fear. It uses warmth. Belonging. The chemical architecture of love.
Book One of the GOTNA Trilogy.
Peter Neal writes literary horror from the Virginia woods, where silence is a presence and the space between sound and meaning is where his stories live. Womb of Shadows is Book One of the Gods of the New Age series — a cycle exploring what happens when biology, language, and grief become indistinguishable. Book Two, The Frequency, continues the story. When he's not writing, he's listening for what comes next.View all by Peter Neal
