If you catch it in time, you might want to change the title because this is less about Courageous Assault and most about whether characters begin combat with a Reaction available.
IMO your ally did not use/lose their Reaction so they don't need to regain it for you to use your ability. I say opinion because there are GMs who disagree. But aren't there Reactions that occur when rolling initiative or before one's first turn (and make no mention of bypassing any rules)? If so, it'd be clear that combatants begin with a Reaction available. Even if not, how did the creatures not regain their Reaction since their last Encounter? Having a Reaction available isn't like a Stance or Rage that one establishes and then it goes away once combat ends.
That said, perception plays a role, the most regular example being a creature w/ Reactive Strike might not know what's occurring, or even that a fight's starting (until their initiative comes up). That's get into nebulous territory IMO, as while that might make sense in a city w/ many noncombatants triggering RS's in the streets, in a haunted castle one's likely to smack anything shadowy darting past (for better or worse).
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The best option that I have heard and the one I run with when I GM is that not having your reaction before your first turn is the penalty for being successfully surprise attacked.
The rules don't say that you get your reaction before your first turn. You get your three actions and your reaction at the start of each of your turns, including the first turn.
However, that doesn't mean that the rules say that you don't get your reaction before your first turn either. Also, there are some abilities that only work if you have a reaction when you roll initiative (Know the Enemy is triggered by rolling initiative) or before you roll initiative (Call to Arms is triggered before rolling initiative). So if the GM rules that you never have your reaction available before your first turn in combat, then those abilities are never able to be used.
It is left unspecified. And one of the benefits of that lack of specification is that different combat starting scenarios can end up with different ruling results.
If the party is sneaking up on enemies that they are aware of and start combat with a group rush, it doesn't make any sense that the characters don't have their reaction from the beginning of combat. They should instead be rewarded by having the enemies suffer some penalty for their successful surprise attack.
However, if it is the party that is being snuck up on and surprise attacked, then they are the ones who should suffer some penalty for that.
In both cases, the rules don't have any framework for how to express the penalty for being surprise attacked. The system doesn't have surprise rounds.
So the idea of not having your reaction available before you get to act if you get surprise attacked is the best representation of game mechanics for a surprise attack that I have available.
If I was the GM in that situation and some sort of alarm was raised I'd probably be nice and rule that the rest was disrupted before initiative was rolled. Otherwise I largely agree with the rest of the thread.
For reactions that trigger off initiative, my personal opinion is that most of those should have been free actions, since that's what most abilities that trigger off initiative are (ex. Battlecry, Gunslinger Ways).
There may be more recent examples, but last I looked into it, most abilities triggering off initiative as a reaction are either from an AP or edge cases. Know Your Enemy is an edge case, because initiative is just one of multiple triggers.
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Just FYI, it is the rule that it is situational whether you get your reaction before your first turn
The GM determines whether you can use reactions before your first turn begins, depending on the situation in which the encounter happens.
Nice. I'm learning something today.
From the look of it, that was added in the Remaster. The Legacy CRB doesn't have that section in it or any specification of using reactions before your first turn.
So it went from accidentally ambiguous to deliberately ambiguous and left up to the table to decide for each battle.
That is not accurate. CRB page 472 says "Reactions in Encounters Your reactions let you respond immediately to what’s happening around you. The GM determines whether you can use reactions before your first turn begins, depending on the situation in which the encounter happens."
It was always case by case.
Even better.