

After the war of the gods, Thrud takes on the heavy duty of ruling the Aesir. She resurrects Alviss — once turned to stone for offending Zeus — and elevates him into a god of her own clan. Grateful for everything Thrud has sacrificed, Alviss swears he will cherish her. When Thrud returns to the realm wounded, she finds Alviss being intimate with an envoy named Levia — and Levia is wearing her crown and her sacred marriage band. Alviss claims that Levia cared for him during the years he was stone, and that he has already elevated her to the rank of divine envoy. When Levia deliberately drops the band, Thrud finally reaches her breaking point and strikes her, stripping Levia of her title on the spot and banishing her from the realm of the Aesir.

To defuse the bomb strapped to the hostage, I had no choice—I cut off all her clothes. My clueless new wife, Dana Poole, blasted it online. She cried as she faced me. "Why not at least leave her underwear on? You were saving her, I get it—but did you have to take everything? Doesn't a girl's dignity matter? With cameras everywhere, how is she supposed to live after this? You couldn't even cover her up?" The backlash exploded. The unit benched me to calm things down. So I stopped caring. I followed procedure, no improvising, no extra effort. Then one day, at the busiest mall in the city, Dana's mom got strapped into a brand-new linked bomb. This time, the whole unit panicked.