Force include node_modules in package? - npm

Question

I want to npm publish my dist dir that looks like this:
dist
├── README.md
├── node_modules
│   └── clap
│   └── dist
│   └── es
│   ├── index.js
│   └── index.js.map
├── package.json
...
└── utils
├── memory-stream.js
├── memory-stream.js.map
├── mysql-users.js
├── mysql-users.js.map
├── sql.js
├── sql.js.map
├── utils.js
└── utils.js.map
Notice how there's a node_modules dir in there. I want to publish that along with everything else.
The files in there are compiled, but they're part of a local package not distributed on npm, so I do want it bundled.
My code references it like this:
var index = require('../node_modules/clap/dist/es/index.js');
So it should work perfectly fine.
The problem is that it looks like npm publish has it hardcoded to ignore directories called node_modules. Is there any way to override that behaviour?