Bound to a Vampire: Into the Dark Woods

Cassandra hunts her vampire maker and Nature Mate, Killian, hoping to find him before her allies who are now her enemies kill him first.

Cassandra Montclaire is a 360-year-old vampire who has been living underground in America under an alias and as a human helping humans and their babies survive difficult pregnancies when she feels the pull to go back home to London. Forrest, one of the negotiators, and a human she is Guardian of, comes to her having just survived an attack on a compound he was at by a vampire she has thought lost for over 200 years: her maker and Nature Mate Killian. Now not only are her allies after Killian to kill him, but she must find him to bring him home and to find the answers that Killian and Cassandra's True Mate, Alastair, need to hear. On the path to find and save Killian, Cassandra dives into the past with Forrest to find the answers herself to answer Forrest's questions of how they got here.

Grey Francis brings history and love to life in the first of the “Into the Dark Woods” series Bound To A Vampire (2015). Francis starts when Annwyn is a small child just discovering her healing abilities to when she is turned by Killian as a young woman and becomes Cassandra. We explore, as Annwyn and Cassandra, the love between Alastair and Killian and BDSM. Then the inclusion of Cassandra into this couple where love blooms and BDSM is initiated and explored on different levels between the three of them. Francis takes us through the changing roles of the relationships and the changing and deepening levels of love. The book is longer than usual for a paranormal romance, but I think to fully explain the dynamics of a polyamorous relationship and how one gets from where Annwyn starts from in the 1600s to the present, you need to go through the process of change in history and in relationships and that takes time. I was not bored in the slightest as I was reading as Francis keeps you hooked either with the drama or the sex. I had originally been intrigued with Grey Francis through the social media postings on Instagram and once I really started paying attention I realized that these books fit right into the LGBTQ+ community as they promote pansexuality. I should have highlighted the line, but sadly I did not, but Killian tells Cassandra when she questions him about homosexuality that vampires do not think of sex or love that way – it is just about the person. Next book please!