Arion Rising - Paperback

With everything great comes strings attached.

Seventeen-year-old Téa Lane has dodged abusive foster homes and is surviving on the streets of Houston, all in order to achieve her STEM dream to become the first Latino female astronaut to spacewalk. One day, she discovers an anomalous Native American artifact that's a powerful seed not of this world and her life is forever changed. It chooses Téa, an unlikely hero, and endows her with superhuman abilities surprisingly around the same time that a numerous amount of young girls start showing up missing or murdered.

After being chosen, a new and mysterious guy, Ben, shows up at her job and school, and Téa worries that he could be one of the murderers. However, she learns that he's an alien from Aepi, a distant planet of peaceful and ocean-dwelling aliens that have come to Earth to seek refuge from the Epex aliens. Now, they have to work together against the growing threat even though they can't stand each other. That's perfectly okay by them since Aepi legend warns against their union anyway.

As Téa starts to buy into the whole fairy godmother turn of events, a surprise kiss from Ben forces her to make a choice: give up her new life or give up her first love. When the interplanetary war between the Aepi and the Epex comes crashing down upon them, Tea is faced with an even harder choice: save humankind or be the one to end it.