Apex Predator Quotes

Vampires smiled for many reasons, but when a vampire male smiled at you from this distance with that kind of look in his eyes it was done for one purpose only: to impress. Look at my big teeth. I’m an apex predator. My genetic material is awesome.

every predator loves easy prey. Her lip curled, baring fangs that there was no one there to see. Because she wasn’t prey. In the vamp world, she was pretty much the apex predator, the mongoose to his snake. And she was about to Rikki Tikki Tavi his ass. Dory

In a way, Darius brings the vampire back to a more classical interpretation. A modern day Dracula who is charming, sensual, and completely monstrous. There is no pretense of humanity with him. He considers himself a member of a species that is the true apex predator of the world, feeding on humans and using them as puppets for their own bizarre games. He's not struggling with any inner angst. Most humans are either food, entertainment, or useful tools to him. Sometimes all three. He finds the modern popular interpretation of vampires both amusing and useful for his own agenda.

But truth was truth, and like any apex predator, it could defend itself.

if you live next door to an apex predator, you shouldn’t go around poking him with a stick. Fiji

I’m not cuddly! I’m an apex predator, woman. Top of the food chain.

The tiger’s world, by contrast, is not only amoral but peculiarly consequence-free, and this-the atavistic certainty that there is nothing more lethal than itself-is the apex predator’s greatest weakness

If there is one thing I can leave with you, it’s this: we work in a jungle and are surrounded by alpha males and apex predators. Everyone’s looking to be the last one standing, to be at the top of the food chain, and they sometimes don’t care who gets hurt in the process. Don’t lose your heart. Don’t lose your soul. Don’t lose your compass, and that doesn’t mean don’t win. Win. Fight. Conquer. You have just as much right to success as anyone who works for it. It may be a jungle, and they may be lions . . .” She pauses, her eyes finding mine again, holding mine. “But the daughter of a lion is still a lion, and this is your domain.

I’d gone from not noticing Lucas ever to being consumed by noticing him constantly. I developed the sensory awareness of an apex predator: at any time I could tell you where Lucas was in the common room, without you ever seeing my eyes flicker toward him.

It’s the same with all apex predators – wolves, tigers, lions, eagles – they’re all beautiful. That’s how they get away with eating you.” “Yeah,” Kyle agreed, “While they’re eating your heart you just lie there going, ‘Take it, you gorgeous thing. I don’t need it.

Does being self-aware magically negate all our other predatory instincts? After all, humans put the ape in apex predator. We are the best of the best. Top drawer. Our only natural enemy is, well, God, and he’s really quite wishy-washy when it comes to predation. The whole mercy and forgiveness thing weakens his predatory resolve.

There are individuals out there that were born to hunt humans. When you realize you're being hunted, you either break down, or you fight. The fighters are the ones who have an unflinching belief and faith in themselves.

Once the region’s apex predator, the Asiatic lion almost went extinct during the British empire’s colonization of India, when no viceroy could visit a maharaja’s palace without a hunt in the local forest. Even today, the Asiatic lion still ranks among the rarest of the large feline predators, rarer even than its neighbor to the north, the snow leopard, which is so scarce that a glimpse of one padding down a jagged Himalayan crag is said to consummate a spiritual pilgrimage.

But then, the trophy room isn't for us. It's for everyone else. My father deals with millionaires and billionaires on a daily basis, the sort of people who have egos just this side (and sometimes way over the edge) of sociopathy. The sort of person who thinks he's the apex predator wading through a universe of sheep. Dad takes them into the trophy room and their eyes get to the size of dinner plates and they realize that whatever shit they've got going on is tiddlywinks compared to Dad. There are maybe three people in the world more interesting than Marcus Shane. They're not one of them.

Attacks by orcas and dolphins are on the rise. Why? Not enough food? Ocean temperatures rising too quickly? I have another idea. With the amount of plastic in the world's oceans the plastic will degenerate down into microplastics. Already these microplastics have entered all food chains and are to be found in soils, plants, animals and people. What are these microplastics doing? Well, we have no idea because not enough informed research has been carried out. For me, I believe that the toxins contained within the plastics are causing neurological disorders in animals & people alike. It's causing more irrational behavior and aggression. The orcas & dolphins are Apex predators, just as we are. Coincidence? Because man at present is doing some really irrational things. Only time and more research will find out some truthful answers.

Because [a human's] chances of surviving... are much better living in a tribe or group than alone, she's developed these beautiful, incredibly complex social tools like empathy, patience, generousity, guilt, friendship, shame, and loyalty that help hold together groups of up to a couple hundred people together even when there's internal disagreements. ...Ever so often, though, a member of [a human's] tribe is born without access to those social tools, and is thus only capable of caring about herself. The modern term is sociopath... ...All those social tools we developed only really work on the small scale, though ---it's as if we only have enough true empathy to extend to a couple hundred people at a time... ...Which is why in our modern world of free markets, [the sociopath's] lack of empathy actually makes her better at surviving...Empathy and morality are clearly vital to our species, but they're often illogical within the simple framework of free-market capitalism...Maybe [the sociopath] installs pain-medicine vending machines, or markets Oxycontin as nonaddictive, or pays her workers much, much less than what it costs to live. This is the kind of innovative thinking that makes [the sociopath] an apex predator of the free market.

It takes no skill to find a bald eagle. You look for flat rabbits on country roads. Wait a while and the national emblem will appear, menace anything that got there first, and plunge his majestic head deep in a mass of entrails. Alternatively, you can follow some industrious hawk through swamp or bottomland forest until he dispatches a squirrel; an eagle is likely to descend, savage the smaller bird, and steal his prize. The eagle can hunt, of course; he just prefers not to. Benjamin Franklin called him a bird of bad moral character. It takes no skill to find the nest, either. Look for a shipwreck in a tree, layered in feces . . . The likeliest impediment to (the eagles’) reproductive success was a human observer bungling around twice a day, but their welfare was almost incidental anyway. The point was for patriotic human hearts to swell with pride on outdoor weekends, and convincing replicas would have sufficed; the compulsive monitoring was not good husbandry, just an expression of national guilt. I did what I was paid for. Privately I sided with the furred and feathered residents of the area who must have wondered why humans were loosing winged hyenas in their midst . . . They’re glorified vultures. An apex predator that never hunts. Absurd.

Not a comforting thought, but Bryce nonetheless popped the silver bean into her mouth, worked up enough saliva, and swallowed. Its metal was cool against her tongue, her throat, and she could have sworn she felt its slickness sliding into her stomach. Lightning cleaved her brain. She was being ripped in two. Her body couldn’t hold all the searing light— Then blackness slammed in. Quiet and restful and eternal. No—that was the room around her. She was on the floor, curled over her knees, and … glowing. Brightly enough to illuminate Rhysand’s and Amren’s shocked faces. Azriel was already poised over her, that deadly dagger drawn and gleaming with a strange black light. He noted the darkness leaking from the blade and blinked. It was the most shock Bryce had seen him display. “Put it away, you fool,” Amren said. “It sings for her, and by bringing it close—” The blade vanished from Azriel’s hand, whisked away by a shadow. Silence, taut and rippling, spread through the room. Bryce stood slowly—as Randall and her mom had taught her to move in front of Vanir and other predators. And as she rose, she found it in her brain: the knowledge of a language that she had not known before. It sat on her tongue, ready to be spoken, as instinctual as her own. It shimmered along her skin, stinging down her spine, her shoulder blades—wait. Oh no. No, no, no. Bryce didn’t dare reach for the tattoo of the Horn, to call attention to the letters that formed the words Through love, all is possible. She could feel them reacting to whatever had been in that spell that set her glowing and could only pray it wasn’t visible. Her prayers were in vain. Amren turned to Rhysand and said in that new, strange language—their language: “The glowing letters inked on her back … they’re the same as those in the Book of Breathings.” They must have seen the words through her T-shirt when she’d been on the floor. With every breath, the tingling lessened, like the glow was fading. But the damage was already done. They once again assessed her. Three apex killers, contemplating a threat. Then Azriel said in a soft, lethal voice, “Explain or you die.

He imagined the world without men. Cities would be reclaimed by nature and overgrown until, hundreds of years hence, they would look much like the mysterious ruins sticking out of the jungles of Asia and South America. Ruins, relics, no more. He honestly did not believe the entire race would be exterminated, just the lion’s share. What was left would be very little different from Neolithic man—hunters and scavengers. Beasts that would rob from each other, rape, murder, and hunt each other down as prey. Essentially, what men were now, but without anything but the most rudimentary tribal traditions to support them and absolutely no laws to prevent them from acting like the slavering beasts they indeed were. Hunters and killers, apex predators that would abandon their churches to worship in the forest and give praise to the cycles of the moon. Given time, things like ethics and morality and even higher culture itself would be forgotten.

Confidence, maybe,” Chang said. “Or overconfidence. He thinks we’re dead by now. Maybe he’s got nothing else to worry about. He could be the apex predator here. Unchallenged.

You need to be careful to stay out of Charlie’s line of sight,” Steve said to me. “I want Charlie focusing only on me. If he changes focus and starts attacking you, it’s going to be too difficult for me to control the situation.” Right. Steve got no argument from me. Getting anywhere near those bone-crushing jaws was the furthest thing from my mind. I wasn’t keen on being down on the water with a huge saltwater crocodile trying to get me. I would have to totally rely on Steve to keep me safe. We stepped into the dinghy, which was moored in Charlie’s enclosure, secured front and back with ropes. Charlie came over immediately to investigate. It didn’t take much to encourage him to have a go at Steve. Steve grabbed a top-jaw rope. He worked on roping Charlie while the cameras rolled. Time and time again, Charlie hurled himself straight at Steve, a half ton of reptile flesh exploding up out of the water a few feet away from me. I tried to hang on precariously and keep the boat counterbalanced. I didn’t want Steve to lose his footing and topple in. Charlie was one angry crocodile. He would have loved nothing more than to get his teeth into Steve. As Charlie used his powerful tail to propel himself out of the water, he arched his neck and opened his jaws wide, whipping his head back and forth, snapping and gnashing. Steve carefully threw the top-jaw rope, but he didn’t actually want to snag Charlie. Then he would have had to get the rope off without stressing the croc, and that would have been tricky. The cameras rolled. Charlie lunged. I cowered. Steve continued to deftly toss the rope. Then, all of a sudden, Charlie swung at the rope instead of Steve, and the rope went right over Charlie’s top jaw. A perfect toss, provided that had been what Steve was trying to do. But it wasn’t. We had a roped croc on our hands that we really didn’t want. Steve immediately let the rope go slack. Charlie had it snagged in his teeth. Because of Steve’s quick thinking and prompt maneuvering, the rope came clear. We breathed a collective sigh of relief. Steve looked up at the cameras. “I think you’ve got it.” John agreed. “I think we do, mate.” The crew cheered. The shoot lasted several minutes, but in the boat, I wasn’t sure if it had been seconds or hours. Watching Steve work Charlie up close had been amazing--a huge, unpredictable animal with a complicated thought process, able to outwit its prey, an animal that had been on the planet for millions of years, yet Steve knew how to manipulate him and got some fantastic footage. To the applause of the crew, Steve got us both out of the boat. He gave me a big hug. He was happy. This was what he loved best, being able to interact and work with wildlife. Never before had anything like it been filmed in any format, much less on thirty-five-millimeter film for a movie theater. We accomplished the shot with the insurance underwriters none the wiser. Steve wanted to portray crocs as the powerful apex predators that they were, keeping everyone safe while he did it. Never once did he want it to appear as though he were dominating the crocodile, or showing off by being in close proximity to it. He wished for the crocodile to be the star of the show, not himself. I was proud of him that day. The shoot represented Steve Irwin at his best, his true colors, and his desire to make people understand how amazing these animals are, to be witnessed by audiences in movie theaters all over the world. We filmed many more sequences with crocs, and each time Steve performed professionally and perfected the shots. He was definitely in his element. With the live-croc footage behind us, the insurance people came on board, and we were finally able to sign a contract with MGM. We were to start filming in earnest. First stop: the Simpson Desert, with perentie lizards and fierce snakes.

Steve looked up at the cameras. “I think you’ve got it.” John agreed. “I think we do, mate.” The crew cheered. The shoot lasted several minutes, but in the boat, I wasn’t sure if it had been seconds or hours. Watching Steve work Charlie up close had been amazing--a huge, unpredictable animal with a complicated thought process, able to outwit its prey, an animal that had been on the planet for millions of years, yet Steve knew how to manipulate him and got some fantastic footage. To the applause of the crew, Steve got us both out of the boat. He gave me a big hug. He was happy. This was what he loved best, being able to interact and work with wildlife. Never before had anything like it been filmed in any format, much less on thirty-five-millimeter film for a movie theater. We accomplished the shot with the insurance underwriters none the wiser. Steve wanted to portray crocs as the powerful apex predators that they were, keeping everyone safe while he did it. Never once did he want it to appear as though he were dominating the crocodile, or showing off by being in close proximity to it. He wished for the crocodile to be the star of the show, not himself. I was proud of him that day. The shoot represented Steve Irwin at his best, his true colors, and his desire to make people understand how amazing these animals are, to be witnessed by audiences in movie theaters all over the world. We filmed many more sequences with crocs, and each time Steve performed professionally and perfected the shots. He was definitely in his element.

Crocodiles have been on the planet for some sixty-five million years, looking just about like this one. They’ve evolved to be the most complex apex predator in their environment. They have a life expectancy similar to ours, and their physiology is surprisingly similar to ours as well: the same basic type of four-chambered heart, and a cerebral cortex. I marveled at the sixty-four long, very sharp, peg-like teeth. Here was an animal able to capture and kill animals much larger than itself. How ironic, I thought, that this-top-of-the-food-chain animal needs our help. As we motored up the river, I restrained the croc on the floor of the boat. I could feel Steve’s reverence for her. He didn’t just like crocodiles. He loved them. We finally came to a good release location. We got the crocodile out onto a sandbar and slipped the ropes and blindfolds and trappings off her. She scuttled back into the water. “She’ll be afraid of boats from now on,” Steve said. “She’ll never get caught again. She’ll have a good, healthy fear of humans, too. It’ll help keep her alive.” Forever afterward, Steve and I referred to the Cattle Creek rescue as our honeymoon trip. It also marked the beginning of Steve’s filming career. He was gifted with the ability to hunt down wildlife. But he hunted animals to save them, not kill them. That’s how the Crocodile Hunter was born.

All apex predators survive precariously. It is extraordinarily difficult to bring a predatory mammal species back after they land on the endangered list. I felt it was better to keep them off the list in the first place.

Idling the dinghy, bringing it quietly in closer and closer to the croc, Steve would finally make his move. He’d creep to the front of the boat and hold the spotlight until the last moment. Then he would leap into the water. Grabbing the crocodile around the scruff of the neck, he would secure its tail between his legs and wrap his body around the thrashing creature. Crocodiles are amazingly strong in the water. Even a six-foot-long subadult would easily take Steve to the bottom of the river, rolling and fighting, trying to dislodge him by scraping against the rocks and snags at the bottom of the river. But Steve would hang on. He knew he could push off the bottom, reach the surface for air, flip the crocodile into his dinghy, and pin the snapping animal down. “Piece of cake,” he said. That was the most incredible story I had ever heard. And Steve was the most incredible man I had ever seen--catching crocodiles by hand to save their lives? This was just unreal. I had an overwhelming sensation. I wanted to build a big campfire, sit down with Steve next to it, and hear his stories all night long. I didn’t want them to ever end. But eventually the tour was over, and I felt I just had to talk to this man. Steve had a broad, easy smile and the biggest hands I had ever seen. I could tell by his stature and stride that he was accustomed to hard work. I saw a series of small scars on the sides of his face and down his arms. He came up and, with a broad Australian accent, said, “G’day, mate.” Uh-oh, I thought. I’m in trouble. I’d never, ever believed in love at first sight. But I had the strangest, most overwhelming feeling that it was destiny that took me into that little wildlife park that day. Steve started talking to me as if we’d known each other all our lives. I interrupted only to have my friend Lori take a picture of us, and the moment I first met Steve was forever captured. I told him about my wildlife rescue work with cougars in Oregon. He told me about his work with crocodiles. The tour was long over, and the zoo was about to close, but we kept talking. Finally I could hear Lori honking her horn in the car park. “I have to go,” I said to Steve, managing a grim smile. I felt a connection as I never had before, and I was about to leave, never to see him again. “Why do you love cougars so much?” he asked, walking me toward the park’s front gate. I had to think for a beat. There were many reasons. “I think it’s how they can actually kill with their mouths,” I finally said. “They can conquer an animal several times their size, grab it in their jaws, and kill it instantly by snapping its neck.” Steve grinned. I hadn’t realized how similar we really were. “That’s what I love about crocodiles,” he said. “They are the most powerful apex predators.” Apex predators. Meaning both cougars and crocs were at the top of the food chain. On opposite sides of the world, this man and I had somehow formed the same interest, the same passion. At the zoo entrance I could see Lori and her friends in the car, anxious to get going back to Brisbane. “Call the zoo if you’re ever here again,” Steve said. “I’d really like to see you again.” Could it be that he felt the same way I did? As we drove back to Brisbane, I was quiet, contemplative. I had no idea how I would accomplish it, but I was determined to figure out a way to see him. The next weekend, Lori was going diving with a friend, and I took a chance and called Steve. “What do you reckon, could I come back for the weekend?” I asked. “Absolutely. I’ll take care of everything,” came Steve’s reply.

In the vocabulary of ecology there is a term for this type of human activity: “fishing down the food web.” With the apex predator out of the way, species that are lower on the pyramid explode in abundance and become the new human harvest. It’s a nearly universal phenomenon in the sea.

My name is Layla Bailey, and this is my biome.” I cut to the footage of my house, turning up the audio so that I can be heard explaining my habitat. I added today’s men in plastic suits to the very end, and I narrate over it. “These people and CPS are the apex predators of my ecosystem, and I am an endangered species. The last of my kind. But the Sierra Club doesn’t make posters out of kids like me.” I add three screenshots near the end. The first is the only picture of my mom I could find, in profile and wreathed in smoke. “This is my mother, Darlene Thompson. She was born in captivity and released into the wild without any skills to care for herself. She is missing. If you see her, do not attempt to approach her, but please contact animal control.” The second is of Andy. “This is Andrew Fisher Bailey, my little brother. He was taken into captivity two days ago by people he had never seen before. I don’t know his whereabouts, but I hope he’s safe. If you see him, remember he is friendly but skittish. He is better off in captivity than in the wild.” The last one is my most recent report card, accessed on the school website by inputting the username and password I created for my mom last year. “This is me, Layla Louise Bailey. I was born in the wild and cannot be domesticated. However, I’m not yet fully capable of caring for myself, either. I have no money and not enough skills. What I have is a 4.0 and really low standards. I’ll do chores. I’ll be quiet. If you’ve got a garage or a laundry room I could sleep in, I am mostly housebroken. I just want to finish school, adopt my little brother, and go to college.

Modern, well-documented research demonstrates that apex predators such as wolves play keystone roles in keeping prey populations healthy by culling the weak and infirm. They also keep ungulate numbers in balance with habitat; wolf reintroduction into Yellowstone resulted in a stunning transformation of overbrowsed, depleted river and stream corridors, to the benefit of many species, from aspens and cottonwoods to beaver to songbirds to cutthroat trout. An

The Creator goes by many names. Perhaps we just chose a different way to believe in the same thing.

You can't condone exploitation and oppression, and demand not to be exploited or oppressed. You can't rule over the lives of others, and demand to be master of your own life. You can't walk around stabbing animals (or paying others to do it for you), and complain when someone does something to hurt you. You have to put out what you want back. Arguing that animals are small brained and therefore it's ok to mistreat them, is small brained. Arguing that animals eat animals and that's why you do it too, is behaving like an animal. Arguing that you're an apex predator when you've probably never even stabbed a single pig in your life makes no sense at all. Arguing "protein!" just shows how little you understand about nutrition. Arguing that our ancestors did so, is simply primitive. Kindness and compassion are not things to be mocked and jeered at, they are positive traits that are vital for the future of mankind and for the moral progress of humanity. If we are ever to see an end to tyranny of our own kind, by our own kind, we have to stop behaving as if we are the only species that matter! As Gandhi once said, you can judge the moral progress of a nation by the way it treats its animals.

She reminded him of the small team of Starfleet officers who had rescued him from certain death on his homeworld many years earlier. They, too, had given off the vibe of “evolved beings,” a quality of their essential nature that had made them fascinating to him: sentient creatures who possessed the attributes of an apex predator, but also the empathy and compassion of a fellow prey animal.

Time was such an odd thing. Everything depended on it, and yet it cared for nothing. It was in some sense the ultimate apex predator, shaping all landscapes and yet consuming all who lived within it.

Sounds he’d never heard come out of his mouth before filled the room as Dex fucked him senseless. “Yeah, you like that? Who’s the apex predator now?” Sloane laughed. “Is that what you think?” Sloane’s inner Felid stirred at the challenge. Dex might be part Therian now, but there was only one Alpha in this room, and it was Sloane. With

Calvin slowly knelt to unlace his boots. When he was done, he stood to gingerly kick them off. He’d become the prey, his every move scrutinized by the near-three-hundred-pound apex predator before him. Ethan was still, waiting for the right moment to pounce. His eyes promised a night Calvin wouldn’t soon forget. Calvin pulled his uniform shirt off and dropped it to the floor so it wouldn’t get torn. He glanced down the hall to Ethan’s bedroom before moving his gaze back to Ethan. A small smile tugged at his partner’s lips. It was on. Calvin bolted down the hall. He didn’t see or hear Ethan, but he didn’t have to. He could feel him.

I’m using the lion and the shark as an example because I think that it illustrates one way to look at Ethereum and bitcoin, when comparing them. If Ethereum is a shark, it is the apex predator within its own environment. It’s a fast swimmer, it can breathe underwater, it eats anything that bothers it. ​ ​If bitcoin is a lion, it rules the land but it doesn’t swim very well.​ ​ You can never really put these two apex predators in a fighting ring together and say, "Let the best one win!" Because the outcome is decided entirely by whether you fill that ring with water or not.

They say man is the ultimate apex predator. Have you heard that?” “Yes.” “We’ve killed just about every other living creature that’s walked or crawled or been born on this earth at one point or another. We’ve put a ton of them on the extinction list. So what happens when that apex predator loses all inhibitions? When he gets it into his head that he should be the last one standing? And everyone is fair game?

White was an apex predator of his discipline—a man who took to heart the idea that science was an endeavor distinguished by falsification, or putting theories to empirical test. Enemies not only resented him; they fucking hated him. He cared not one bit. “Self-criticism will enhance your science,” White later wrote, “self-esteem will not.” As far as White was concerned, there was a single version of truth.

Remembrance "Hold on to what is good, Even if it's a handful of earth. Hold on to what you believe, Even if it's a tree that stands by itself. Hold on to what you must do, Even if it's a long way from here. Hold on to your life, Even if it's easier to let go. Hold on to my hand, Even if someday I'll be gone away from you." Crowfoot

Tigers don’t hunt in groups. They attach solitary. Hence however realistic this dance is, it is still faulty as they failed to understand the apex predator they are imitating.

If one person embodies this approach to work and life—the apex predator of the anticipated regret food chain—that person is Jeff Bezos. He’s one of the richest people in the world, thanks to founding Amazon, one of the largest companies on the planet. He owns The Washington Post. He visits outer space. Yet in the domain of our most misunderstood emotion, he is best known for a concept that he calls the “Regret Minimization Framework.

Oh no,” Max drawled. “I am at the mercy of a dangerous, but incredibly beautiful apex predator. Whatever shall I do?” “You’ll lay there and take it like a good boy,” Jules whispered.

It wasn’t just hair. It was fur. Dark brown, coarse fur, like that of a bear, or some other type of apex predator. Holy shit. I had become a monster.

Life is not separate from death. It only looks that way.” Blackfoot

I was a mouse caught in a trap before, scared, and helpless as I was taken between the teeth of an apex predator. But I'm not their little mouse, and they are not Zade. And I will never succumb to them.

Now the white shark has returned to one of America’s most iconic summertime destinations, and it’s challenging our perception of what the ocean is to us. For the first time in a long time, we have a hazy sense of what it means not to be the top predator. For the first time in a long time, we’ve had to consider what it means to be prey, even if we’re only mistaken as such. What do we do with those emotions? Do we celebrate our ecological success—the restoration of an apex predator to an ecosystem—or do we defend our hard-won territory?

And natural selection over time seems to have picked humans who were the best, most efficient carriers, found a study in the Journal of Anatomy. Carrying, the research suggests, is a driving force behind why we became apex predators

Demons were one thing, but anyone who’s ever been attacked by a goose can tell you that they’re aggressive apex predators descended from dinosaurs. And unlike demons, geese can’t be tricked, befriended, or reasoned with. If one of those honking bastards was sitting here waiting for us like a drug dealer we owed money, then a fight wasn’t just likely, it was inevitable.

Yes. And Mor is my Third. Only a fool would think my Illyrian warriors were the apex predators in our circle.

At the desk in the showroom, Bryce removed Tharion’s letter from the top of the pile, while Hunt began to leaf through some of the pages beneath. The blood rushed from her face at a photograph in Hunt’s hand. “Is that a body?” Hunt grunted. “It’s what’s left of one after Tharion pried it from a sobek’s lair.” Bryce couldn’t stop the shudder down her spine. Clocking in at more than twenty-five feet and nearly three thousand pounds of scale-covered muscle, sobeks were among the worst of the apex predators who prowled the river. Mean, strong, and with teeth that could snap you in two, a full-grown male sobek could make most Vanir back away. “He’s insane.” Hunt chuckled. “Oh, he most certainly is.

Jennings was a predator, but tonight, Tobias was the apex predator and he was going to enjoy every moment.

[Gaze of the Apex Hunter (Legendary)] – A Hunter who has seen his gaze reflected in the eyes of the Apex Predator and now stares back with equal zeal. A glance that penetrates into the very soul of its prey, the gaze of the Apex Hunter can immobilize or even kill any it sees. Gives the Hunter the ability to paralyze, knock out, and even kill his prey through visual contact. This skill directly targets the soul of the target, ignoring distance, physical defense, and most magical defenses. Passively enhances the Hunter’s eyes, increasing the effect of Perception while also making weak points easier to spot. All effects of Gaze of the Apex Hunter are determined by Perception.

Ah, my mistake,” she said. “They are all there but they are hiding. The Void of the Hunter hangs over them. The animals of the Waste will not dare the ambient until it has passed.” The Void was a hunting skill perfected by the apex predators of the Highreaches. It was a psychic trick, an emptiness meant to entrap the unwary or ensnare the weak-minded.

I choose to exercise my status as an apex predator. And I laugh in the face of cholesterol.

The violence we’d seen shouldn’t have surprised me. Humans were violent. We were the apex predators, each one of us alive only because our ancestors had killed and eaten other animals, outcompeted everything else to survive.

These men may be skilled in hunting, but what they don't know is that I've been hunted by a far scarier man. I was a mouse caught in a trap before, scared, and helpless as I was taken between the teeth of an apex predator. But I'm not their little mouse, and they are not Zade. And I will never succumb to them.

An apex predator assessing her prey.

There are tiers,” he said neutrally, “within our circle. Amren is my Second in command.” A female? The surprise must have been written on my face because Rhys said, “Yes. And Mor is my Third. Only a fool would think my Illyrian warriors were the apex predators in our circle.” Irreverent, cheerful Mor—was Third to the High Lord of the Night Court. Rhys went on, “You’ll see what I mean when you meet Amren. She looks High Fae, but something different prowls beneath her skin.” Rhys nodded to a passing couple, who bowed their heads in merry greeting. “She might be older than this city, but she’s vain, and likes to hoard her baubles and belongings like a firedrake in a cave. So … be on your guard. You both have tempers when provoked, and I don’t want you to have any surprises tonight.

Our whale relatives were designed with no significant method of defense and are placed by the Creator to live in--by human standards--the most hostile environment on earth, the open ocean. The whale people show all other animal nations that genuine nobility does not require jeweled crowns, a manufactured aristocratic title, or even being an apex predator. The whale people elicit awe for being the living embodiment of noble dignity. People all over the world ride out onto the ocean to experience this dignity up close and personal. Genuine noble dignity is only possible with the total release of control. In other words, we walk away from our own sense of dignity when we allow or apply oppression on anything or anyone else. We know what it means to respect someone for who they are, or for what they've achieved, or for the way that they do something that we regard as meaningful. Dignity is our inner sense of respecting who we are, what we've achieved, and how we behave. Essentially, dignity is how we respect our self.