Author's Note: Dear readers, sorry it took so long for me to get this done, but in all honesty I was kind of waiting for my review count to reach 20 (is ashamed of selfishness). Now that it has though, I'm going to keep to my self-promise and give you your third chapter.

I hope you're happy with this, coz it sure took a lot of effort to write from the male perspective. I'm not that perfectly adept at Kiba's mind and way of thought, so I might have screwed this up a bit. Nonetheless, it's your interests that I'm trying to please, and because you guys asked for it, here it is.

Read and review, aite? :)

This chapter is dedicated to all my wonderful reviewers. To Hana Hanie, dracolady1441, Xx-Silent Ookami-Xx, Crazy About Coffee, minniemousemom, Kcoolkat24, Mizuki-chan Uchiha, Ougi-san, DeeJay Reina, Tsukiko hoshino and KohoriNS6. Oh, and of course, to Kittens Hellfire. Thank you for helping me reach 21!

Chapter III: Brownie Points

(Kiba)

It was 3.10am, just a couple of hours since I had left Sakura's apartment and flitted through the empty streets to my own room in the three-tiered Inuzuka estate at the edge of town. Everybody but the guard dogs outside were asleep by the time I snuck in, so I didn't find it much of a hassle to leap through my bedroom window, silent as the ninja I was supposed to be, strip myself down to my boxers and slide into bed, Akamaru's ears only slightly twitching as he acknowledged my arrival.

Right now, however, I was lying on my bed, staring hopelessly at the ceiling, unable to sleep despite the knowledge that tomorrow was definitely going to be a long, tiring day and that if I were to deal with it, I had better get a few hours of rest behind me.

'Look at yourself, Kiba,' the little voice in my head muttered to me as I drew invisible circles at the ceiling above with my fingers as an alternative to counting sheep. '21 and engaged, all ready. So much for being a free-bird til death do us part, huh?'

Rules. Manners. Children. All that didn't go with me. The name Inuzuka Kiba didn't belong as a husband, let alone a family man. It was tough enough that my mum wanted me to take up leadership of the Inuzuka clan, but the idea of taking it up with a life-partner and (God forbid) children by my side was simply… inhumane.

"Damn it, Akamaru," I found myself hissing through my teeth, rolling over to glare down at my so-called 'loyal best friend' who was fast asleep by the edge of my bed, seemingly ignorant to the turmoil he had put me through in just a split-second of sudden heat. "You've no idea what you've done. Why her, of all people?"

When I envisioned myself in the future, I never did expect to tie the knot with anyone. But in the off chance that I did happen to stumble upon a rough day, was one beer too overdosed and probably had nothing better to do than to risk my perfect free life to a life of chains, the wife I did have in mind would have to be someone a little more inconspicuous. Reserved. Sweet and tender. Fair. Cute. Nicely obedient and a little more on the gentle, quiet side.

Okay, yes, I admit it – I used to have the biggest childhood crush on Hinata, my teammate for all these years. But even you have to confess that girls like that, like Hinata, would make the perfect spouse to any man (if said man chose to get married at all, I mean). She's calm and sweet and speaks only when absolutely necessary. She doesn't simply explode on the spot and kill your eardrums with declarations for explanation, unlike some people I know.

While Sakura was nice and all (maybe), I had the exact same opinion of her as she had of me. She wanted a Sasuke, I preferred a Hinata. Admittedly, I know that I can be a tad too loud and obnoxious for my own good, which is why I think Akamaru was wrong to have chosen Sakura in the first place. Both she and I are too hazardous, too rambunctious, to be paired up with one another. Think time-bombs. Two of them. That certainly wouldn't make a good match.

So why her?

I tried to scrape out some optimism about my betrothal to Sakura:

For one, she was clever, that's for certain.

Two, she was a top medic-nin; the top most for her age and probably second only in the world to Tsunade, in fact, which would be good for my medical expenses, I expect, and probably good for the clan, personally, too. After all, how many ninja families in Konoha can boast the fact that they have one of the most sought-after medic-nins in the world to their dispense? Certainly not the Hyuugas.

Three, she most likely had a good personality, though, til this day, I am uncertain about this statement. I do, however, choose to try to believe this as she somehow manages to keep to the good books of Uzumaki Naruto, who doesn't simply befriend people if they don't have a good attitude.

…But, then again, there is Gaara, who was a mass-murderer and probably still is a raging psychopath at the time Naruto befriended him. And that Uchiha guy, who is Naruto's self-proclaimed best friend despite being on the verge of tearing this city down to the roots. And Sai, who is just plain weird, what with his stomach-bearing dress sense and that freaky smile that seems to somehow mentally rape people without them realizing it. And...

Oh, God, I can't do this.

No matter how hard I tried to put on a sunny disposition, Haruno Sakura's faults just seemed to scream at me right in my face.

One, she had temper problems. I deduced this from the fact that Naruto never left her vicinity without at least sustaining a couple of bruises (and if that's the least of it, you can expect a few broken internal organs and fractured bones to be her response of a hard day at work).

Two, she was loud, an obvious downside to any relationship. After all, who'd want to be hitched to a woman who was screaming in their ears 24/7? If I wanted to be yelled at, I'd stick to forever living with my mum, thank you very much. I don't need two crazy women telling me to take a shower before I go to bed.

Three, she had incredible mood-swings. This I can testify for, for real. I saw it, just a couple of weeks ago, during my trip down to the hospital. I wasn't her patient that day, thank God, but whoever it was that was, certainly had a tough time trying to bear with Sakura as his nurse. One second she was all polite in her professional calm and formalities, the next she was blaring down at him about not taking the medicines she had prescribed a week earlier.

Four, she was a stalker. Again, I have real life references for this fact. Uchiha Sasuke, for one, and I can swear, too, that she once was after Hyuuga Neji.

Five, and probably the thing I feared most – she had pink hair. NATURAL pink hair. Can you imagine having children with her? I'm not going to have to admit even having a son if he's going to be born a pink-haired dandelion! Inuzukas have, for so many years, managed to walk the streets as confident brunettes becoming of any proper man. The furthest any of our kin had ever gotten with experimental hair colors was by my cousin Yuudai, who was born with a mop of dark purple hair – and even that was made subject to many a family jibe for all these years. So kindly put yourselves in my shoes and imagine me, KIBA, having a son with PINK hair. No way, man. No. Freaking. WAY.

All these reasons, I realized, was starting to make matters worse, rather than doing what I had initially planned to and make me feel better about my early betrothal. So not wanting to dwell on the matter any further, I forced myself to empty my head of all thoughts, good or bad, and focus on some serious shut-eye.

After all, I'm going to need plenty of it if I'm going to have to deal with what is most likely going to be a complete migraine tomorrow.

Tie, check. Shiny black shoes, check. Hair?

I licked my fingers and swept them through my unruly brown hair before looking, again, into the mirror to study my reflection.

'You look like shit, Inuzuka,' was the first thing to come to mind, as my legs twitched and the blood ran cold through my hands and fingers, making me put on this sort of pale, sick-looking disposition of a man meeting his untimely end.

I was a train-wreck that morning, there were no other more suitable words used to describe it. After having paced back and forth around my bedroom floor for a whole half hour, I had finally mustered the guts to meet up with my mother in the back yard, where she was going through her morning training regime with Kuromaru, her dog-nin companion.

Fidgeting uncontrollably, I spilled the whole of my situation to her, to which her response was to look at me wide-eyed for what felt like forever, studying me like I was a stupid little untrained pup, before clasping her arms around me and yelling in what I somehow managed to comprehend as joy.

"WELL, stop standing around here in that dirty old coat of yours, get dressed and pick her up, all ready!" she finally said upon releasing me from her monster hug.

Whether she noticed that I was sending off an incredibly gloomy aura that day was doubtful. She seemed so ecstatic by the fact that her son was finally going to become a proper young gentleman and that Akamaru had chosen for me such a qualified young woman to help me lead the Inuzuka clan that her usually top-notch senses were uncharacteristically clouded that morning. But Kuromaru seemed to take notice, and when he did, his response was a small, suspicious looking grin and his best wishes. "You're going to be fine, Kiba-chan," he said, unhelpingly.

My nod lacked enthusiasm, but it was enough to keep the large beast satisfied, as he licked his chops and sauntered off elsewhere, back to the side of my beaming mother, most likely.

So, now, here I was.

It was only fifteen minutes past eight when I arrived outside Sakura's doorstep, a considerable feat for me, I must add.

I had rung the doorbell twice out of impatience, and, having received no answer from the other side, now began to rap on said door madly and shout, "Sakura, would you hurry up? I've been here for ages, damn it!" A little bit of a white lie never hurt anyone.

What I got as a reply was a grumpy, "Don't get your panties in a bunch, I'll be right there, damnit!" followed by the sound of crashing into things and under-the-breath swear words.

Oh, great. It's always a good sign when your fiancé doesn't answer your door on time, is foul tempered, is probably a bit of a klutz and enjoys sending a good string of curses to the man she was about to be wed off to.

Not for the first time that morning, I found myself going, 'What the hell were you thinking, Akamaru?' and seriously considered having said dog's head examined.

"I'm READY!"

The door burst open, revealing my future wife, her nostrils flared, cheeks blazing, and eyes glaring down at me as if daring I say anything to send her off the edge; a brief comment about her attire, a shot at her tardiness, anything I said would have probably sent her flying at me with iron fists.

But instead of giving her the pleasure of making her day, I chose the smart approach and said very gently, "You look nice."

Sakura's eyeballs bulged.

"R-really?" her reply, obviously flabbergasted. "Oh." Her cheeks grew a darker shade of magenta, this time in pleasure rather than out of fury. "Th-thank you. You look nice, too."

I nodded. "Shall we?"

And Sakura nodded back.

With that, we were on our way. An unlikely pair, me and her, and, as we walked the crowded streets, I was pretty sure that we had a fair pair of eyes thinking similarly.

Never in a lifetime would anyone expect Haruno Sakura and I to be in such close proximity with one another, and dressed so... nicely for the matter, as well. Usually, if the two of us were to meet, it would be under missionary circumstances, the both of us probably swathed in bruises and clad in attire suitable only for the Konoha nin.

Today, however, was an obvious difference.

Today, for the very first time ever, the civilians of this town managed to see Inuzuka Kiba in a way even I never saw him before. Dressed head to toe in regal, black dinner-party attire. Hair less of a ruggedly handsome mess than usual. Lips no longer twisted into a cheeky grin. Eyes straight ahead, when not, of course, running brief inspections on the partner standing next to me.

Sakura, admittedly, was, as I put it, looking very nice, too.

Instead of her normal medic attire, she had opted for a simple dress – yellow spaghetti-strapped and falling just a bit above the knees, it was obsequious for her body and she looked like a proper lady. Her hair, too, was nicely done. A casual ponytail that left enough bangs to flatter what I just noticed was a heart-shaped face, small, full lips, a perky nose and bright, brilliant bottle-green eyes.

I could've let my eyes wander further down – to the neck, maybe, those bones running across her bare shoulders, perhaps, that small crease of what I could imagine would be two very full, milky mounds of—

But no, of course I didn't.

I'm a gentleman, after all.

"Kiba, is this your home?" Sakura finally gasped, reeling me out of further perverted thoughts.

I roused myself from said mounds (that I was not looking at, by the way) and grinned at her fascination. "Yep," my response to her gaping awe. "And it'll be yours, too, soon enough, so, come on. Mum'll be expecting us."

As I led the way to the grand front entrance of my family estate, I couldn't help but notice Sakura's gentle exhale, and the darkened expression she held as she nodded her affirmative and followed after me, shoulders back, looking ever the prized ninja everyone claimed her to be.

Unknowing to Sakura, it was in those brief moments of her wordlessly tagging along that I realized a couple of extra things:

One, Sakura was no wimp. She was a strong, dedicated kunoichi that most certainly did not back down on anything, be it an arm-wrestling match against men three times her size, or the fact that she was about to be tied down to a prestigious family she knew little to nothing of.

Two, she was very pretty. Even with her lack of makeup and the fact that she chose not to work hard at trying to impress me that morning, she somehow pulled off looking casually attractive without meaning to.

Three, in her firm dedication not to chicken out and maturity enough to allow me to take the reins of this situation she was forcefully pulled into; she had definitely managed to catch my interest and, with it, snag a couple of brownie points to add to her resume.

I hope that stating this so early in the ritual isn't going to jinx anything or whatever, but right now, at this instance, I suddenly didn't feel as though Akamaru was in such dire need of a brain operation after all.

Author's Note: There you go. 2,521 words, my longest chapter to date. In my opinion, writing from Kiba's point of view doesn't feel as great as it did Sakura's. Then again, as I've said before, it's your opinion that really matters. Leave me your reviews telling me what you think, coz if it were up to me, I'd stick to Sakura's POV more often than I would Kiba's. Then again, I can always try alternating between the two, for more chemistry, I mean.

What say you?

PS, I'm trying to reach 30 before my next chapter. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink and all that. Teehee.