The child who would be Rapax grew up with a small village of woodsmen and hunters, his mother died in childbirth. Never appreciated or liked (another useless mouth to feed) he spent his time on the edges of their homes, playing with their dogs or their fowl. He often went out into the hilly Massif to scavenge berries and sometimes try and catch rabbits or ground squirrels or other small game.
The child found a large river-otter who was, he discovered, very talkative and chatty - as his Animal ken developed. With his mistreatment by the families of town, the chattery otter convinced him to run away into the woods and be taken care of by the otter. As the story goes, the otter turned out to be a very mischevious wizard - a shapeshifter of Ex Miscellanea. His mentor was quite pleased to find an apprentice who could speak with beasts (since he himself could not) and often used the boy as a translator, while teaching him the secrets of the body's transformations. Often, Rapax would spend seasons at a time in animal form as he learned. When he mastered the shape-shifting magic, he was taught the Secret Knowledge, an ancient magic that was suppressed by the order, to never be shared except with ones' apprentice.
When he was finally gauntleted, introduced to the Tribunal, and took his hermetic name - Rapax - the youth went to seek his own fortunes. While his mentor focused on trickery and stealth and cleverness to get things done, Rapax found he had a talent for the more visceral aspects of bestial life, the claws and fangs and violence. Though at odds with his kinder nature, Rapax did have a deep, old dislike of the woodsfolk from his childhood, and when a large magical wolf came to his master for help against their culling, Rapax volunteered to drive away the humans - earning himself a bit of satisfaction, and developing a reputation among the Magical Beasts as one who can help against the humans.
This would turn out to be a very, very troublesome reputation. The next season, a Stag of Virtue needed help rescuing his newborn son from a magus, and the negotiation was almost violent before the magus convinced the Stag and his son of the benefits of the familiar bond. Later that year, an Owl of Virtue needed help rescuing his home forest from loggers.
When Rapax's parens sent him as a representative to a burgeoning covenant of the Secret Knowledge, he was more than happy to get himself away from the highlands - but the Magic beasts still seem to need his help, even here.