Meet the Vanguard: The Found Family in Unclaimed

Found family is on every romantasy checklist, and it is one of the reasons I wrote the Unseen Series. In Unclaimed it gets ten people, a training field, and a horse who has strong feelings about who gets to ride her.

They are called the Vanguard. The Cadre builds them as an accelerated cohort, which means ten recruits pushed through training faster than anyone else at Duskreach. Here is how one scene sums them up, watching from the railing over the riding field. I'm quoting the manuscript directly:

Cassian drove aggression. Ilyra organized the structure. Brannik held the line. Talin disrupted patterns. Torren broke formations. Elowen observed. Tharek disappeared into the terrain. Mira stabilized magical variables.

That's eight of the ten. The other two are Kaevren, a panther who can vanish across open ground, and Jade, who arrived at Duskreach with a tether on her wrist and no intention of trusting anyone.

Three names to remember

Talin is a fox shifter who talks too much, and he is the first person at Duskreach to ask Jade a question she can't answer with a lie.

Cassian is a lion shifter who expects to be welcome everywhere. He is usually right.

Kaevren is a panther who watches longer than anyone notices.

The rest I'll leave for you to meet in the book. Brannik, Ilyra, Torren, Elowen, Tharek and Mira each have a role in that line above, and each one has a story the line doesn't tell.

Why they work

On paper, this unit shouldn't function. Most strike groups in the Cadre are disciplined to the point of silence, because emotion makes mistakes and attachment makes hesitation. The Vanguard jokes, argues and mocks each other. Then Commander Garrick gives a signal and they reform in an instant, the chaos gone.

That tension is what I wanted to write. Found family does not mean a group of soft people being nice to each other. These ten are training to kill when it is necessary. They are also, slowly and against the Cadre's better judgment, becoming people who would notice if one of them went missing.

Where Jade fits

Jade does not lead them. Nobody assigned her anything. She rides toward the front of a pursuit drill, and the others fall in behind her. They do not follow rank. They follow momentum, and she generates it.

I'll let you decide what that means. Master Eryx, who watches the field from his window, has a theory of his own.

While you wait

Unclaimed is in edits now, aiming for the end of the year with January as a real possibility. If you haven't met Jade yet, Unchosen is where it starts. And tell me in the comments or on Instagram (@authormnightwell): which of the ten do you want to know more about? I'll pull the questions into a future Reader Q&A.

Want in early? The Cadre Archive is where the in-world reports go first: author.jenniferdamaskos.com/archived-cadre-access