Wordpress - Get first post from wp_query

If you poke through WP_Query the set of queried posts is saved into posts property and current post gets assigned to post one (each time loop iterates).

So you could do $connected->posts[0] if you need to just fetch that, but it might be more convenient to do $connected->the_post(); then $connected->post if you need to skip first one and process the rest in normal loop.